Some great science longreads from 2011
Longform.org has a list of their favorite long science articles of 2011. Included are some of my favorites, as well: Daniel Engber's Slate.com story about the problem with research mice; Susan Dominus'...
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Indie rock, class, race, and culture in America
Martin Douglas's "The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show" is a fascinating longread about race, culture and class, partly a memoir of Douglas's life as a young black kid in a North Carolina housing...
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America's prison population, by the numbers
Quinn Norton's "long form data journalism" piece on the American prison system paints a bleak picture of a nation that feasts on its poorest and most vulnerable with a boundless, venomous cruelty....
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America's mass incarceration of black people: the most important essay you'll...
Ta-Nehisi Coates's longread in the Atlantic, "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration" is a stupendous piece of serious journalism, tracing the long history of system racism in America to...
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Not (just) the War on Drugs: the difficult, complicated truth about American...
U Penn political scientist Marie Gottschalk has a new book out, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics, in which she expands on her prodigious work on the root causes of...
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A profile of America's killingest cops: the police of Kern County, CA
The predominantly white police of predominantly black and Latino, Tea-Party-governed Kern County, California kill more people per capita than any other force in America. The Guardian's Jon Swaine,...
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Parasitic Souls: what if there was a tech bubble, but for magic?
This novel was inspired indirectly by a book about chemists in the mid-20th century, when someone bold enough and lucky enough could discover a new element and win glory. I then thought about the tech...
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The only person to go to prison for a string of corporate pollution scandals...
Tennie White is a lab owner who became a relentless crusader for environmental justice for black towns and neighborhoods where giant corporations dumped toxic chemicals and walked away scot free; her...
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An analysis of Donald Trump’s election win and the prospects for his presidency
Much has been said of Donald Trump's presidency, which begins today with his sparsely-attended inauguration in Washington, D.C. If there's one thing I found insightful and well-geared to the historical...
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The Carbon Bubble is about to pop
Despite Trump's denial of climate change the the ghastly attacks on climate science and mitigation in the new proposed budget, the Carbon Bubble -- which overprices hydrocarbons and the industries...
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An in-depth look at Castle, Waymo's fake city for testing self-driving cars
Alexis Madrigal got a chance to visit the fascinating town of Castle, a roads-only city constructed by Waymo for the sole purpose of developing self-driving cars. (more…)
View ArticleAn insider's view of Facebook's 15 months in hell: my take
Following up on Xeni's post from earlier today: For their 12,000-word, beautifully reported story on how Facebook's top executives coped with 15 months of mounting crises, Wired's Nicholas Thompson...
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Profile of a fake pro cyclist takes dark turn into tragedy, harassment and...
Nick Clark built out a bike shop pretending to be a successful retired pro cyclist. He made it work by carefully pitching his imaginary wins at a certain level—a bronze medal here, a national time...
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