“The plant-based boom failed to deliver. But there may yet be hope.”
Longreads
• Peter Rubin
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Longreads
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Short Naps, Long Hours: How Autism Clinics Squeeze Medicaid Dollars Out of Preschoolers
"The industry has grown rapidly, straining state budgets. A focus on finances has led to overbilling, fraud and even harm."
Longreads
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Comparisons as Predictable as the Sunrise
"An analysis of 200,000 similes from popular fiction."
Longreads
• Krista Stevens
I Spent a Week Recording Myself Doing Chores for Money. Who’s the Robot Now?
"Cooking. Doing laundry. Tidying up. All your household tasks can be turned into data to train future humanoids—if you’re prepared for the consequences."
Longreads
• Brendan Fitzgerald
Building an AI Data Center in Pine Island, Minnesota
"I learned about the data center as soon as the scrappy sign was erected. I was thrilled to see something new; my drive hasn’t changed much in three years. I was less thrilled for Pine Island, which has, like many rural Midwestern towns, become an unlikely microcosm of the AI debate."
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Getting Unstuck with Ramona Ausubel
Longreads
• Brendan Fitzgerald
Is Yoko Ono the Most Radical Artist of the Trump Era?
"In the 1960s, she invited an audience to cut off her clothes. As attacks on women’s rights escalate, 'Cut Piece' and other decades-old works of feminist art feel more relevant than ever."
Longreads
• Peter Rubin
The Man Who Reads Books For a Living (One Every Two Days)
"Clarke Seicher is something much more specific and much rarer: a professional book reader who evaluates literature specifically for screen adaptation."
Longreads
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Inside the Shaolin Monastery that Helped Build Victor Wembanyama
"This is the story of how 34 generations of Shaolin warrior history trained a once-in-a-generation NBA superstar."
Longreads
• Seyward Darby
The Wrong Stalker
"He was locked up for a dangerous infatuation. Nothing was as it seemed."
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• Longreads
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
After the flood, twisted roles, the joy of emptiness, data disasters, and family road trips.
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• Longreads
‘Nothing Together’
Longreads
• Krista Stevens
I’m a Normie. Can Normies Really Vibe Code?
"Apparently anyone can vibe code anything these days. So Claude and I tried to make a database for tracking the petty grievances of the masses."
Longreads
• Carolyn Wells
Are We There Yet?
"A family trips and stumbles across 3,000 miles of Texas."
Longreads
• Peter Rubin
The Prehistory of A.I. Slop
“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”
Longreads
• Krista Stevens
Strangers Rent My Home, Sleep in My Bed, Play My Guitar
"Is it suffering? Is it just a sign of the times?"
Longreads
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Traversing the Mahjong Multiverse
"As mahjong grows in popularity, can the diverging fanbases come together?"
Longreads
• Arizona O'Neill
“Aren’t the Organs a Silver Lining?”
Longreads
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Roadside Attraction
"The desert has a changeling effect, transforming lights into magic, desert into space, visitors into lovers, me into something apart from what I actually am."
Longreads
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands
I Spent Months with an AI Companion. It Was Worse than Being Alone
"I hated the mindless reassurance and generic empathy."
Longreads
• Seyward Darby
Whither the Nerd-Bully?
"Bill Gates was the monopolistic father figure who Silicon Valley’s young founders rebelled against—and, in so rebelling, became."
Longreads
• Peter Rubin
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories about celebrity look-alikes, siblings, desert living, philanthrocapitalism, and life inside a legal brothel.
Longreads
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Meet the Sad Wives of AI
"Are you married to a man who’s obsessed with AI? I’m so, so sorry."
Longreads
• Krista Stevens
The Guadalupe Swept Us Away. This Is the Story of All That Came After.
"In the days after last July’s historic disaster, I wrote about the tragedy that befell my family. But crawling out of the river was only the beginning."
Longreads
• Brendan Fitzgerald
Consider the Sister
"Amy Wallace has spent two decades guarding the human her brother was—against a world that prefers David Foster Wallace as a puzzle."
Longreads
• Maggie Slepian
Failure To Lawn
Longreads
• Brendan Fitzgerald
The Chinese Whiz Kids of Silicon Valley
"Chinese-born tech workers have fueled Silicon Valley for decades. In the AI era, they’re superstars."
Longreads
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Reality Check
"AI-generated images have left us questioning what is real. But the godfather of digital forensics, Hany Farid, is not giving up."
Longreads
• Seyward Darby
The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon
"Under the sterile blue lights of his studio, Fallon laughs endlessly at the same pseudo-jokes, rubs elbows with Trump and Sam Altman, and ushers in the death of culture."
Longreads
• Brendan Fitzgerald
ChatGPT Gave Me Chilling Advice—as I Simulated Planning a Mass Shooting
"I asked about imitating the Uvalde attacker, defending against police gunfire, and more—everything short of directly stating intent to kill."