"He was in his early forties, married, with the blackest hair I’d ever seen on a white man, dusted with dandruff he was either trying to get rid of or felt no particular way about. As I stood across Eighth Avenue, waiting for the light to change, I wondered if I should hold his gaze until we were close enough to touch." —Kyla Marshell for New Orleans Review https://www.neworleansreview.org/blue-daniel/

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Relationships

"After a life spent as a pillar of Bend’s civic life, Mr. Coyner had somehow reached a point of near total destitution, surrounded by the prosperity he had helped create." —Mike Baker @nytimes

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/28/us/bend-oregon-mayor-homeless.html

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Unhoused #Homeless #MentalIllness

"In Shaper’s view, alcohol’s supposed health benefits were an artifact of number crunching. Writing in the Lancet, he lobbed the academic equivalent of a verbal grenade: 'It seems that any analysis which uses non-drinkers or occasional drinkers as a baseline is likely to be misleading.'” —Tim Requarth for Slate

https://slate.com/technology/2023/04/alcohol-wine-drinking-healthy-dangerous-study.html

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Alcohol #Science #TimRequarth

A kindergarten class dispersed by war. A taut investigation into two men’s disappearance. A portrait of the legendary Harry Belafonte. Memories of a traditional cooking lesson. And everything that goes into the restaurant of the moment. All in today's edition of the #LongreadsTop5.

https://longreads.com/2023/04/28/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-463/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #WeekendReading

"What exists now is an escalating game of whack-a-mole between students, teachers, and IT departments, as kids hopeful to do anything but school work try to find a way to play games."

@patrickklepek for #Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3mxkj/inside-the-chaotic-world-of-kids-trying-to-play-video-games-on-school-laptops

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #VideoGames #School

"No one could prove these were hate crimes, or even crimes at all. Years passed, and the cases remained open, and both men’s children grew up without their fathers. Calkins repeatedly denied harming the men. He was never criminally charged."

Thomas Lake investigates two unsolved cases involving a Florida deputy, for #CNN: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/04/us/naples-florida-deputy-missing-men

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Crime #Investigation

"Choi wondered whether he would ever get the opportunity to publicly repent before he died. Then in late 2020, he received a call from a man explaining that he was with a group that was looking into the massacres in Gwangju."

Max Kim for @latimes: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-04-24/south-korea-former-soldier-believed-accomplice-murder

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #SouthKorea #History #Soldiers #memory

"His style is to step back, take a look at how many supercentenarians there have been, and figure out when they lived and died. The limits of human longevity won’t be found by looking at individuals, he believes, but by examining super-long-lived people collectively."

@mattreynolds for @WIRED

https://www.wired.com/story/human-age-limit/

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Aging #Centenarians #Longevity #Science

"We, the proud women of the family, we feel and smell and taste and touch and create. We know when it is good because we know when it is good. But some of the clan is gone, and they are only echoes now. My mother and I don’t speak of the deceased, but we understand why I must be the one to roll. I am soaking in the instruction. It is a heavy responsibility." —Jasmin Attia for LitHub

https://lithub.com/remembering-the-egyptian-childhood-i-never-had-through-its-culinary-traditions/

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Egypt #Immigration #Food

@jeffsharlet's lyrical profile of Harry Belafonte for Virginia Quarterly Review: "In 1959, Belafonte was playing Vegas for $50,000 a week. Every night he looked out on an ocean of white. Black people couldn’t have afforded his show even if Vegas hadn’t been segregated. But TV? Black folks had TVs. One night on television reached more black people than a year of Sundays at the Apollo. TV, Belafonte thought, would be his hammer."

https://www.vqronline.org/articles/voice-and-hammer

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #HarryBelafonte

Jaron Lanier on the potential to manage A.I. thoughtfully, for @NewYorker "A positive spin on A.I. is that it might spell the end of this torture, if we use it well. We can now imagine a Web site that reformulates itself on the fly for someone who is color-blind, say, or a site that tailors itself to someone’s particular cognitive abilities and styles."

https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/there-is-no-ai

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #AI #JaronLanier

"Days before my Tower Records closed down in 2006, I visited the damn near empty store and almost wept. To this day, I’ve never stopped thinking about that music sanctuary for the twenty years it existed at that location."

Michael A. Gonzales for #WeAreTheMutants: https://wearethemutants.com/2023/04/12/on-4th-and-broadway-remembering-tower-records

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #TowerRecords #Music #NYC

"Not every person who is homeless is mentally ill or uses drugs, and having one of those traits—or all three—doesn’t make you dangerous; it makes you vulnerable. Indeed, study after study demonstrates that people without homes are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than they are to commit it."

Katie Prout for #ChicagoReader: https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/why-you-talking-to-a-bum-cta-unhoused-police/

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Chicago #Unhoused

"Whiskey is being poured into wineglasses, and the cheese plate has become an ashtray."

Willy Staley for #TheNewYorkTimesMagazine:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/magazine/twitter-dying.html

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Twitter #Internet

All in today's edition of the #LongreadsTop5: An exploration into the horror of “ghost boats.” Profiles of a rap legend, a brilliant cybersecurity expert, and a social media savvy guru, as well as a beautiful essay on the sights and sounds of the desert.

https://longreads.com/2023/04/21/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-462/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #WeekendReading

"If, like me, you came of age before legalization, you will recall one thing about procuring weed back in the day: You didn’t have a lot of choices. You couldn’t choose between OG Kush or Bombay Crush, between Cheese Dog and Chem Dawg, between Grape Ape and Gorilla Glue. No. You got whatever Danny’s older brother sold you. And you were stoked." —Bill Shapiro for Esquire

https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a43618937/weed-strains/

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #BillShapiro #Esquire #Weed

"In 2021, at least seven boats appearing to be from northwest Africa washed up in the Caribbean and in Brazil. All carried dead bodies. These 'ghost boats' — and likely many others that have vanished — are in part an unintended result of years of efforts and billions of dollars spent by Europe to stop crossings on the Mediterranean Sea." Renata Brito / Felipe Dana for @AP

https://apnews.com/article/adrift-investigation-migrants-mauritania-tobago-663a576e233cb4b363f5eda8d5969b5a

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Migrants

"Already, the chatbot has helped him generate business plans, internal system documents, blog posts, and Excel spreadsheets. He estimated that ChatGPT can often pull off 80 percent of the legwork, leaving him to handle the final 20 percent." —Maxwell Strachan for @VICENews on those who use ChatGPT to do multiple full-time jobs.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7begx/overemployed-hustlers-exploit-chatgpt-to-take-on-even-more-full-time-jobs

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #ChatGPT

"We humans evolved to walk. There must be a mathematical equation for such double movement, earth spinning, human walking, both tiny blips in the cosmos. I doubt it can be expressed as a constant." —David Jenkins for High Country News

https://www.hcn.org/articles/ideas-recreation-during-a-pandemic-walk

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #Walking #Nature #Geocaching

"Organ transplantation is mired in stagnant science and antiquated, imprecise medicine that fails patients and organ donors. And I understand the irony of an incredibly successful and fortunate two-time heart transplant recipient making this case, but my longevity also provides me with a unique vantage point." —Amy Silverstein for @nytimes

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/opinion/heart-transplant-donor.html

#Longreads #EditorsPicks #OrganTransplant #Science #Medicine