Category: Dark

  • Not All of America’s National-Security Threats Are Overseas | The New Yorker

    Not All of America’s National-Security Threats Are Overseas | The New Yorker

    Not All of America’s National-Security Threats Are Overseas

    Congress’s foreign-aid follies with Israel and Ukraine, and the fear of Trump in 2024.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/not-all-of-americas-national-security-threats-are-overseas

    Nine days ago, the idea that an obscure 2020 election denier from Shreveport, Louisiana, with less than five thousand dollars in his household’s bank accounts, a literalist’s belief in the presence of dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, and a dubious past as an advocate of “conversion” therapy for gay teens could single-handedly shape the fate of tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance to key allies at war was even more preposterous than the notion that America might soon reëlect its four-times-indicted former President.

  • A Russian Journalist’s Pained Love for Her Country | The New Yorker

    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.”

  • 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’

    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.

  • Book Review: Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried

    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

  • China’s Age of Malaise | The New Yorker

    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?

  • The Real Cost of Plundering the Planet’s Resources | The New Yorker

    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

  • Jim Jordan’s Conspiratorial Quest for Power | The New Yorker

    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?”

  • Israel’s Calamity—and After | The New Yorker

    Israel’s Calamity—and After | The New Yorker

    Israel’s Calamity—and After

    October 7, 2023, will be a date etched in Jewish history.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/israels-calamity-and-after

    “Snuff films,” one Israeli friend called them. And yet, he said, “for some people it’s the only way to discover if their friends or relatives are alive or dead.”

  • Why the Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore | The New Yorker

    Why the Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore

    The social-media Web as we knew it, a place where we consumed the posts of our fellow-humans and posted in return, appears to be over.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/why-the-internet-isnt-fun-anymore

    The social-media Web as we knew it, a place where we consumed the posts of our fellow-humans and posted in return, appears to be over. The precipitous decline of X is the bellwether for a new era of the Internet that simply feels less fun than it used to be. Remember having fun online?

  • Trump’s Bloody Campaign Promises | The New Yorker

    Trump’s Bloody Campaign Promises

    It’s tempting to ignore the former President’s expressions of rage, but the stakes for American democracy demand that attention be paid.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-bloody-campaign-promises

    According to human-rights organizations, Duterte’s extralegal rampage killed more than ten thousand people.

    Over time, Donald Trump has been no less truthful about his intentions than Rodrigo Duterte

  • Telling the Truth About Mexico, and Dying for It – The New York Times

    Telling the Truth About Mexico, and Dying for It – The New York Times

    Who Hired the Hitmen to Silence Zitácuaro?

    In one small Mexican city, journalists who tried to expose cartel violence and government corruption became swept up in the murders devouring the country.

    Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/magazine/mexican-journalists-assassinations.html

    But the man on the other end spoke in a way that was instantly familiar. Linares had come to know that pitched, menacing tone from years of run-ins with every kind of Mexican gangster.

    “This is Commander Eagle,” the voice said. “I’m from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.”

  • How the AR-15 Became an American Brand | The New Yorker

    How the AR-15 Became an American Brand | The New Yorker

    How the AR-15 Became an American Brand

    The rifle is a consumer product to which advertisers successfully attached an identity—one that has translated to a particularly intractable politics.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-the-ar-15-became-an-american-brand

    Watching the video last summer, I couldn’t help recalling, given Aldean’s association with a mass shooting, that one thing that was tried in a small town in recent American history was the massacre that killed nineteen children in Uvalde, Texas, last year; that law enforcement in that small town waited in the halls for an hour without confronting the shooter; that the small town’s only pediatrician later testified to Congress about identifying the dead by the cartoons on their clothes because their bodies were too damaged. Considered in this light, “Try That in a Small Town” becomes an allegory about posturing over perceived threats to national integrity while ignoring the lived reality of a horror too disturbing to mediate.

  • How LinkedIn Got Weird

    It's not just you. LinkedIn has gotten really weird.

    It’s not just you. LinkedIn has gotten really weird.

    Divorce, trouble peeing, and stealing hotel food: Why did a job network become everyone’s favorite place for oversharing?

    via Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-linkedin-got-weird-work-life-blurred-lines-of-oversharing-2023-9

    Take one post from Peter Rota, an SEO specialist from Massachusetts. “I have a secret,” he wrote to his thousands of followers in August 2022. “Most people are not even aware this is a real thing. Since 2015, I have struggled with peeing in public restrooms.”

  • Salt Lake City, Utah

    Salt Lake City, Utah

    A woman with a 32-ounce soda approaches me on the street. She asks me if I’ve heard of “source” and “non-source” people. I immediately start recording

    Her: And so I would be a source and you would be a non-source. There’s fillers and players. So I would be a player and you would be a filler. Because you’re on a movie set type thing.

    Me: Yeah.

    You got it. You should look into it. It’s a real thing. And people are playing, they’re gamers. And they’re playing games with people’s lives. And it’s real. I’m not okay with it.

    And then there’s, I think the non-source people are robotic. With skin and they have no soul. I mean just check it out. Like I, I believe some of it, but I can’t believe that it would be so extravagant like this. Do you know what I mean? If it was a movie set, like come on. But it’s weird because at night I can see almost like people in the background like and there’s lights lighting like, like it would be a stage or a set. It’s crazy.

    So would it, would a non-source person know they were a non-source person?

    Yeah, and the source person doesn’t know.

    So I, I wouldn’t know that my life is a movie?

    Okay.

    But you would. Wild. I gotta look into this.

    Man, you do. And then there’s a thing called Pareidolia where you see faces in trees, in dirt, piles, wherever you look. It’s a real thing. Haven’t you ever looked and seen like, like people, like I see, sometimes I see people in trees. Sometimes I see people in places that there really shouldn’t be and they’re blended in with whatever it is, wherever they’re at.

    Like I, I drove up and sat behind the LDS conference. Where it goes up that hill. And I sat on the hill and I, I, I would give you my life that it was real. There was a person dressed exactly how the back of the building was and he was just, you couldn’t see his head, but you could see his shirt and it had a black stripe. And I could tell it was a freaking person. Just standing there. Just standing there.

    Whoa.

    And I, I don’t know what their thing is or what the motive or agenda is. You want to see something really weird. Go to 8th South and 2nd East. And halfway down there’s a Catholic church. Drive into the back and pull in and start watching the plants. I shit you not, I would have gave up my life once again and my soul that that was real. They’re people and they’re all doing nasty pornographic shit. You can see their faces, their arms, their movements.

    Whoa.

    And dude, I would have gave up my life that very moment. And I said, I’m going to find out what’s wrong. I got out of the van, walk towards the plant and there was nothing but heat. So like is it when you get close, it goes away.

    How do they get out? How do they get away?

    There’s a door there that they can go. I feel like there’s doorways to different realms. Okay, right next to us that we can’t. That’s why all these weird paranormal creatures are coming into play and shit. I’m not I don’t know what to believe but really ultimately I have faith in God my creator and I want to believe that but so many things down here at the grass. When you have your eyes open, you’re looking you’re looking around. So you’re seeing How about how’s that saying go believe 90% of what you see and 10% of what you hear? Or something like that.

    Well, let me ask you this. I’ll look into the source non-source. Is there anything you can do to protect yourself or or what is what do you do there?

    No, I really I really don’t know. That would probably be something very I think would be dangerous to even try and find out because if they know, you know, I mean, you know, I don’t know if I believe it. I mean, it’s just too extravagant. This is all too extravagant. But what if what if I’m smart enough and intelligent enough to implement what if you know and it’s just so crazy, you know, I want you to go over there tonight. I want you to I’m going it right after that.

    I’m going to go check out that conference center.

    You got to do it in the dark. You got to do it when it’s dark. Okay, and I’m telling you sure as I’m standing here. You’re going to see what I saw. And I really maybe get my number and call me after you know, yeah.

    Would you give me your number?

    Okay, and just text me what you saw because I’m about ready to go completely viral. Okay, it’s real but I found out the plant is a devil’s snare. I found out the name of the plant and there was this drunk guy and he fell by the stairs. But as he was laying there, I should you know, I’m not lying. I tell you that on my daddy’s grave when he was laying there where I turned and looked at his head it his head turned into a pig. Whoa, you can see the two ears. And his snout and now when you go over there and look where he was plant is dead. There’s something I don’t know what I don’t know what is going on.

    Yeah.

    I’m telling you something going on. We went to Home Depot to get something and it was really late at night. Yeah, it was closing time and we walked out and there was a semi there with a loading truck and he was loading up about 25 cars. Where in the fuck’s all the people? Where are all the people?

    Right.

    I don’t get it. I need I need somebody.

    I’m sure you’re level-headed.

    I’m a level-headed person. I don’t need drugs. I do Xanax. Yeah, my anxiety. But other than that, that’s why I put my life on it. That’s real and I’ll put my life on it that you’ll see the same shit.

    I’ll check it out.

    It is fucking crazy. And if you don’t feel comfortable take take a buddy with you. Take a buddy always have two people because if you don’t if if you are alone, how are you going to explain? It’s hard. It’s hard to explain. So it would be cool to have a buddy see what you saw and don’t say anything of what you’re seeing. Wait till wait wait until he says. Oh my God. Just show up just show up and let them experience it. Yeah, and see what they say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that’s the best way to verify that shit. Wow, and if I’ve seen it my friends seen it. When you show the picture people are tripping out on it.

    Yeah.

    Now if you do see it, it’s real right?

  • Out-Of-Work Journalist Turns to Smuggling Weed – Rolling Stone

    Confessions of a Journalist Turned Weed Smuggler

    Confessions of a Journalist Turned Weed Smuggler

    A veteran reporter looks back on when he was laid off from his newspaper gig and instead of taking a dead-end desk job turned to running van loads of marijuana across state lines

    via Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/confessions-of-a-weed-smuggler-1234825272/

    This is something they don’t tell you about criminal activity. When you’re facing economic hardship, you’re also usually facing mind-numbing, soul-destroying drudgery at the jobs that are available to you. It’s not just that they don’t pay you enough. They also make you feel dead. A lot of people turn to illegal or otherwise questionable activity simply because they want to feel alive.

  • A.I. and the Next Generation of Drone Warfare | The New Yorker

    A.I. and the Next Generation of Drone Warfare

    A.I. and the Next Generation of Drone Warfare

    The Pentagon’s Replicator initiative envisions swarms of low-cost autonomous machines that could remake the American arsenal.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ai-and-the-next-generation-of-drone-warfare

    As she envisions it, there will be “constellations” of these systems “flung into space, scores at a time”; pods of small, solar-propelled boats outfitted with sensors, trawling the ocean and relaying real-time intelligence; and “flocks” of aerial drones, some conducting surveillance and others carrying weapons

  • How “This Fool” Became the Summer’s Best Comedy | The New Yorker

    How “This Fool” Became the Summer’s Best Comedy

    How “This Fool” Became the Summer’s Best Comedy

    The Hulu series tackles depression, the carceral state, and racial tension in L.A. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/how-this-fool-became-the-summers-best-comedy

    Luis is impulsive, Napoleonic, and stuck in the values he held when he entered prison; Julio is self-important, neurotic, and paralyzed by choice even in porn. The protagonists aren’t irreproachable role models but something rarer and more valuable: relatable assholes