Link: https://www.vqronline.org/reporting-articles/2020/06/messengers?src=longreads
Tag: longreads
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The Story Has Gotten Away from Us
The story has gotten away from us
Six months of life and death in America.
via Columbia Journalism Review: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/covid-floyd-protests.php
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The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think
The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think – bellingcat
Translations:English (UK)Русский (Россия)On May 26th, crowds gathered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to protest the death of 46-year-old George Floyd at the hands of the city’s police department. Floyd was black. Many of the protesters were people of color.
via bellingcat: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-movement-is-not-what-you-think/
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A Biblical Mystery at Oxford
Is The Original New Testament Lost? :: A Dialogue with Dr. Bart Ehrman & Dr. Daniel Wallace
An evening of scholarly dialogue on the origins, the transmission, and the reliability of the New Testament. Do we have the original manuscripts? Can we trus…
via YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg-dJA3SnTA
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History Will Judge the Complicit
History Will Judge the Complicit
Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?
via The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/
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Untangling Andy Warhol
Untangling Andy Warhol
The Pop iconoclast obsessively documented his life, but he also lied constantly, almost recreationally, Joan Acocella writes.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/08/untangling-andy-warhol
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The Great Buenos Aires Bank Heist
The Real-Life Bank Heist that Reads Like an Oceans 11 Sequel
An all-star crew, a plan that tricked the police, and a successful getaway that left them with a fortune. But no one expected what happened next.
via GQ: https://www.gq.com/story/the-great-buenos-aires-bank-heist
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Reading
Is Zero Hedge a Russian Trojan Horse?
The father of the founder of the conspiratorial site filed a criminal complaint against me in Bulgaria. Then things got weird.
via The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/156788/zero-hedge-russian-trojan-horse?utm_content=buffer0e705&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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Every Inch of Earth
Every Inch of Earth
Sebastian Meyer and Kamaran Najm co-founded a photo agency in Iraq and teamed up to document a new era in Kurdistan, a region with a long history of suffering. Until Kamaran was captured by ISIS.
via Guernica: https://www.guernicamag.com/every-inch-of-earth/
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Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’
Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ | Free to read
The novelist on how coronavirus threatens India — and what the country, and the world, should do next
Link: https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca
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A $60 Billion Housing Grab by Wall Street
A $60 Billion Housing Grab by Wall Street (Published 2020)
Hundreds of thousands of single-family homes are now in the hands of giant companies — squeezing renters for revenue and putting the American dream even further out of reach.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/magazine/wall-street-landlords.html
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No One Had Instincts Like Fred Willard
No One Had Instincts Like Fred Willard
All along, Willard’s instincts as an actor made us feel better about our own, by showing us characters who are even more absurd than we are.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/no-one-had-instincts-like-fred-willard
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Since I Met Edward Snowden, I’ve Never Stopped Watching My Back
Since I Met Edward Snowden, I’ve Never Stopped Watching My Back
After receiving a trove of documents from the whistleblower, I found myself under surveillance and investigation by the U.S. government.
via The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/edward-snowden-operation-firstfruits/610573/
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The Twilight of the Iranian Revolution
The Twilight of the Iranian Revolution
For decades, Ayatollah Khamenei has professed enmity with America. Now his regime is threatened from within the country.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/25/the-twilight-of-the-iranian-revolution
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The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder
Lee Holloway programmed internet security firm Cloudflare into being. But then he became apathetic, distant, and unpredictable—for a long time, no one could make sense of it.
The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder -
Quotes
Norman Ornstein, a political scientist specializing in congressional matters at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told me that he has known every Senate Majority Leader in the past fifty years, and that McConnell “will go down in history as one of the most significant people in destroying the fundamentals of our constitutional democracy.” He continued, “There isn’t anyone remotely close. There’s nobody as corrupt, in terms of violating the norms of government.”
How Mitch McConnell Became Trump’s Enabler-in-ChiefDunleavy vowed to do this without any painful spending cuts. Once in office, he launched a dramatic assault on the state’s public sector. A year ago, his administration announced a budget proposal that included the restored dividend—about three thousand dollars—but not the retroactive amount, which was paid for by more than a billion dollars in cuts. It reduced funding by more than forty per cent for the University of Alaska system and by three hundred million dollars for the state’s Department of Education. Safety-net cuts included a ninety-per-cent reduction for homeless services, a decrease for Medicaid of more than a third, and the elimination of programs such as adult Medicaid dental benefits, cash assistance to the elderly poor, and public assistance to Alaskans who are blind or have disabilities. A number of essential services were also gutted, including the Alaska Marine Highway System, a network of ferries that provides a transportation lifeline to dozens of coastal communities unconnected to the state’s road system.
Why Alaskans Are Trying to Recall Their GovernorBy the last week of February, it was clear to the administration’s public health team that schools and businesses in hot spots would have to close. But in the turbulence of the Trump White House, it took three more weeks to persuade the president that failure to act quickly to control the spread of the virus would have dire consequences.
He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the VirusDeath Stranding had made me contemplate every exhausting step. At many points, I reflected that if I didn’t have to finish the game in order to write this article, I would have quit. But I’m glad I didn’t — because I would have missed out on one of the most beautiful and unsettling experiences I’ve ever had in a game.
Hideo Kojima’s Strange, Unforgettable Video-Game Worlds -
You’ve never owned a camera.
I have no interest in taking pictures. Who cares? What’s the point?
Larry David -
The Accusations Were Lies. But Could We Prove It?
When the university told my wife about the sexual-harassment complaints against her, we knew they weren’t true. We had no idea how strange the truth really was.
The Accusations Were Lies. But Could We Prove It? -
How Saudi Arabia Infiltrated Twitter
“Proactive and reactively we will delete evil my brother.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-saudi-arabia-infiltrated-twitter