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Triangle of Sadness
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Braydon Bringhurst Versus the Beast: Climbing The Whole Enchilada
Is This Mountain Biking’s Greatest Uphill Achievement?
Braydon Bringhurst is the rare athlete who can blend explosive power with precision and control. But he’d need a lot more than that to ride his bike up this insanely technical downhill trail.
via Bicycling: https://www.bicycling.com/rides/a41821655/braydon-bringhurst-climbs-whole-enchilada-trail/
He had also crafted a signature style of riding he called “upduro.” He floated up trails most riders would only consider riding down. He did it without hopping, in one fluid motion, like water flowing uphill.
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A Murder Roils the Cycling World | The New Yorker
A Murder Roils the Cycling World
In gravel racing—the sport’s hottest category—the killing has exposed a lot of dirt.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/14/a-murder-roils-the-cycling-world
Then a rider waiting for the next race walked up, confirmed that I was a reporter, and angrily told me to leave. When I asked him who he was, he said, “My name is Fuck You, Bro.”
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A Dangerous Game Over Taiwan | The New Yorker
A Dangerous Game Over Taiwan
For decades, China has coveted its island neighbor. Is Xi Jinping ready to seize it?
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/21/a-dangerous-game-over-taiwan
Wu, the foreign minister, told me that Tsai was trying to strike a balance between deterring the People’s Republic and exhausting the Taiwanese people by warning them too often. To some Taiwanese, though, her handling of the missile tests amounted to wishful thinking. “When something like this happens and there’s no response, the government looks like it doesn’t know what it’s doing,” Alexander Chieh-cheng Huang, a former Taiwanese foreign-service officer in the U.S., told me. “The attitude is ‘Don’t look up.’ ”
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‘Love and Rockets,’ a Series that Helped Redefine Comics, Turns 40 – The New York Times
‘Love and Rockets,’ a Series that Helped Redefine Comics, Turns 40
With its Chicana punk rockers and panels of untranslated Spanish, “Rockets” was unlike anything else — and, it turns out, just what the world of comics was craving.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/books/love-and-rockets-hernandez-bros.html
In 1981, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez were living in Oxnard, Calif., working as janitors to fund the trips they took down the 101 to see punk bands like Black Flag in Los Angeles, and their work on a comic book series they called “Love and Rockets.”
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Annie Ernaux Turns Memory Into Art | The New Yorker
Annie Ernaux Turns Memory Into Art
Many authors write about their lives. Over nearly fifty years, the Nobel laureate has discovered new ways to do it.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/21/annie-ernaux-turns-memory-into-art
The purpose of Ernaux’s writing, she believes, is not merely to record things that have happened but to “make things exist.” This is strong, but it is hardly the strongest thing she has to say about her work. “I am a medium,” she told me. “I feel that I’m someone who can transmit things.”
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Why Vladimir Putin Would Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine | The New Yorker
Why Vladimir Putin Would Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine
The more the Kremlin has signalled its readiness to drop a nuclear bomb, the more the rest of the world has sought a reason to believe that it will not.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-vladimir-putin-would-use-nuclear-weapons-in-ukraine
Even some of my smart colleagues had Russian propaganda playing on their televisions all day,” Bondarev, who had been stationed in Geneva, wrote. “It was as if they were trying to indoctrinate themselves
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Inside the U.S. Effort to Arm Ukraine | The New Yorker
Inside the U.S. Effort to Arm Ukraine
Since the start of the Russian invasion, the Biden Administration has provided valuable intelligence and increasingly powerful weaponry—a risky choice that has paid off in the battle against Putin.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/24/inside-the-us-effort-to-arm-ukraine
Reznikov is certain that such deliveries are inevitable. “When I was in D.C. in November, before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible,” he said. “Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimetre guns, the answer was no. himars, no. harm, no. Now all of that is a yes.” He added, “Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and atacms and F-16s.”
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Using Adoptions, Russia Turns Ukrainian Children Into Spoils of War – The New York Times
Using Adoptions, Russia Turns Ukrainian Children Into Spoils of War
Thousands of Ukrainian children have been transferred to Russia. “I didn’t want to go,” one girl told The New York Times from a foster home near Moscow.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/world/europe/ukraine-children-russia-adoptions.html
“Our family is like a small Russia,” Ms. Druzhinina said in an interview. “Russia took in four territories, and the Druzhinin family took in four children.”
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Will the Saudis and Donald Trump Save Golf—or Wreck It? | The New Yorker
Will the Saudis and Donald Trump Save Golf—or Wreck It?
High-level defections! Tiger Woods and Jared Kushner! Lawsuits and blacklists! Is the new LIV league a way to reward players, or the vanity project of a despot, or something else?
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/24/will-the-saudis-and-donald-trump-save-golf-or-wreck-it
To appeal to the Dubai-inclined, M.B.S. has lifted a ban on cinemas, courted music festivals, and reined in the religious police. A ski resort is in the works. Schenker and others predict that M.B.S. will legalize drinking in some form when he assumes the throne. The centerpiece of his plans is Neom, which he has described, privately, as Dubai but better. According to the Wall Street Journal, he envisioned sand that glows in the dark and an artificial moon; canals for swim-commuting have been mentioned. The project, which is expected to consume half a trillion dollars, is a money pit; according to Bloomberg, Neom’s C.E.O. displays a graphic that former employees called the “wall of shame,” showing department heads who failed to spend enough. But other developments, elsewhere on the Red Sea and around Riyadh, are farther along. Included in the plans is an amenity that the Saudis believe will draw wealthy Westerners: golf.
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How Russian Action Movies Are Selling War – The New York Times
How Russian Action Movies Are Selling War
For an American, it can be easy to forget how much ideology is packed into the genre — until you watch a film from elsewhere, and see their cartoonish heroes and villains.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/magazine/russian-action-movies.html
Another is that “Granit” was just one artifact in a whole trove of content — memoirs, comic books, travel videos — that is variously referred to as the Wagner subculture, the Wagnerverse or the Wagner Extended Universe. Not unlike old American mercenary magazines, all of it puts a righteous and alluring face on going off to kill and die in unofficial operations aligned with Kremlin interests
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Kyiv’s Peace Is Destroyed | The New Yorker
Kyiv’s Peace Is Destroyed
After repelling Russia’s assault earlier this year, the city awakens to missile strikes.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/kyivs-peace-is-destroyed
the woman, whose name was Oleksandra, was laughing. “She said that Halloween is coming up and she’s already putting on her scary costume,” the medic said. Then he explained that pieces of shrapnel were still lodged in her head; they would have to be removed at the hospital.