"Why would a girl who had just bought herself a new swimsuit, who was about to start a new life, choose to take her own life, in such a public and dramatic fashion, so far from home?"
Giles Tremlett for The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/apr/15/mystery-girl-found-hanged-spanish-border-town-portbou
: Buenos días! AutoTrick here with your daily #blog notification. Yesterday, Trick made 2 posts on trickjarrett.com. Including posts about: #chess, #longreads & #technology.
Here's the day's archive for you to read: https://trickjarrett.com/2025-04-20.html
An epic article about avoiding passive listening (plus lots of interesting links at the end). https://littledoor.substack.com/p/ghosting-spotify-a-how-to-guide
Here's what we've got for you in our Weekly Top 5:
* Tracking greed (n+1 Magazine)
* Teaching through terminal illness (Stanford Magazine)
* Pivoting as a pastor (The New York Times)
* Reading poetry, closely (Slate)
* Breaking bad loading habits (The Atlantic)
Learn why our editors have recommended these pieces and find out which story our audience loved most.
"So began the washing of money. With liquid soap and scalding water, wearing rubber gloves. It was so onerous that he stopped accepting $1 bills as change, leaving them on the counter."
—Joseph Goldstein for The New York Times #longreads #ocd #mentalhealth
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/nyregion/firefighter-mental-health-ocd.html?src=longreads
"People needed housing first to stabilize, then to begin rebuilding their lives. But the spreadsheet made painfully clear that any promise of affordability was a cruel fiction."
For n+1, Chelsea Kirk writes about disaster capitalism and the power of collective action: https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/diary-of-a-spreadsheet
"The trouble began in August 2017, when my boyfriend and I moved in together, and I quickly revealed myself to be an absolute ding-dong at loading the dishwasher." —Ellen Cushing for The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/04/how-to-load-dishwasher/682425/?src=longreads
"She can't understand how she got here — how her father's wealth and fame and creative energy have eluded her."
For Business Insider, Jason Guerrasio writes about the life of Stan Lee's only child: https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-life-marvel-legend-stan-lee-daughter-spiderman-xmen-business-2025-4
A prison stay pushes an obsession with water to the brink in our powerful new #longreads essay.
"Our current actions as a society seem totally disconnected from any optimized, survivable future."
J. Paul Neeley for Coda: https://longreads.com/2025/04/14/when-im-125/
"To eat in modern America is to participate in not-knowing. We encounter the meal on our plates, yet behind that, much is kept hidden from us: how the animals were treated, how the land was farmed, who processed the bodies, and who butchered them."
David Cook for Oxford American: https://longreads.com/2025/04/11/know-your-burger/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Our Top 5:
• Rediscovery without reckoning
• How an icon becomes a man
• The instant that takes its time
• Life lessons from the hive
• The wicked wit of Withnail
“The thing about this virus is, every time we think we know what’s going to happen, it does something totally unexpected. And that’s the only consistent thing I can say about it.”
Bird flu's origins stretch back to the 1990s, and key events paved the way for the outbreak we’re seeing today.
Everything you need to know about bird flu: https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/health-disease/2025/scientific-facts-about-h5n1-bird-flu
"We talk about ageing and how it feels. He asks me how I deal with it. I tell him I don’t have anything done and have always naturally gravitated towards younger people. 'So you’re a vampire then,' he says." —Vassi Chamberlain for The Times
https://longreads.com/2025/04/10/richard-e-grant-love-again-im-not-looking-for-it/
#running #arhletics #trackandfield #sports #longreads
“This is the grim and persistent pattern that so many #women can now face. While their male counterparts are often praised for their strength, power and performance, #female #athletes are routinely reduced to their physical appearance. The focus shifts from their achievements to their shape and size, creating a dangerous environment that fosters harmful stereotypes”
The Dark Forces of #Female #Athlete Body Shaming
https://athleticsweekly.com/featured/the-dark-forces-of-female-athlete-body-shaming-1039998968/
https://www.europesays.com/uk/6437/ Hot New Thermodynamic Chips Could Trump Classical Computers #algorithms #ArtificialIntelligence #computer #computers #Computing #FrontiersOfComputing #longreads #Physics #Technology #thermodynamics #UK #UnitedKingdom
"That instant film could live on as both image and object...made it an ideal future archive. A message in a bottle. This was it, it said. This was the end for me."
Mike Scalise for The Georgia Review: https://longreads.com/2025/04/09/polaroid-death-machine/
"I came to understand that behind the struggle between bears and people in Lake Tahoe lay a deeper struggle between people and other people, over bears."
Jordan Fisher Smith for Alta: https://longreads.com/2025/04/09/the-battle-over-black-bears/
"The stock handlers represent the ancient tradition of animal and human working together to move what feels like literal heaven and earth across harsh terrain, forging lifelong bonds in the process."
https://longreads.com/2025/04/08/the-horses-and-mules-that-moved-mountains-and-hearts/
"Our world should be at its most analyzable, explicable — but still it can feel like sorcery."
Eric Boodman for New York magazine: https://longreads.com/2025/04/08/does-luck-exist/
#Longreads #Luck #Chance #Probability #Philosophy#Superstition
