Share Exceptional Articles You Have Read

[seamus2389]

Every couple months I read an article like this that reminds me how ahead of the curve Jeff Gertsmann was with how Giantbomb is run. Come for the reviews by Gamespot alums, stay for the podcasts and video. Also I think he is describing what 1up tried to do with people known for their writing being part of a stable of different podcasts except back than ad on podcasts came no where near 10,000 an episode cause they were so new and unknown.

 

In fact, it’s more than possible that in the long-run the current state of publishing — massive scale driven by advertising on one hand,and one-person shops with low revenue numbers and even lower costs on the other — will end up being an aberration. Focused, quality-obsessed publications will take advantage of bundle economics to collect “stars” and monetize them through some combination of subscriptions (less likely) or alternate media forms. Said media forms, like podcasts, are tough to grow on their own, but again, that is what makes them such a great match for writing, which is perfect for growth but terrible for monetization.

 

Why, though, does Simmons have those fans in the first place? Because of his writing. The flipside of writing being hard to monetize is that it is the most digestible and sharable medium, allowing folks to accrue large audiences that they can leverage elsewhere

[juv3nal]

I find it difficult to care about Nicki Minaj. Like, clearly there is someone out there that thinks her music is great but from where I'm sitting her biggest hit was thoroughly out-classed by the 30-year-old song it sampled from

 

I don't care for Nicki Minaj's music that much, generally, but her verse on Monster tho.

[Mangela Lansbury]

https://medium.com/matter/selfie-fe945dcba6b0#.gzk5jyha6

 

This article on selfies is so good

[Bjorn]

 The Lonely Death of George Bell is a beautiful eulogy for a man who died with nobody to notice he wasn't there anymore.

 

I just got around to reading this.  Perfect timing in the dark of the night with a cold winter wind howling as background music to an otherwise quiet house.  These kinds of stories, exploring the life of the ordinary dead, never stop being fascinating to me. 

[Gormongous]

Not a particular exceptional article, but an article on what makes lecturing an exceptional way of teaching the humanities (and repeatedly citing my favorite professor in undergrad, Monessa Cummins): http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/lecture-me-really.html

[juv3nal]

thread necro!

 

The Mastermind:

He was a brilliant programmer and a vicious cartel boss, who became a prized U.S. government asset. The Atavist Magazine presents a story of an elusive criminal kingpin, told in weekly installments.

 

preface/background

part 1 and update

part 2

part 3

part 4

 

there are going to be, I think, 7 parts in total not including the preface

 

related, a side story about TrueCrypt by the same author over at the New Yorker.

and Stilwell, a *redacted for spoiler reasons* person who figures in the story is quoted in this article in the Washington Post about a gun show.

[namman siggins]

What a sobering and somber read on the future of welfare. Fuck.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-end-of-welfare-as-we-know-it/476322/

[namman siggins]

Giant leak from Mossack Fonseca that shows various high-levels of corruption and wealth hiding

https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160403-panama-papers-global-overview.html

https://panamapapers.icij.org/video/

[namman siggins]

Fuck...

 

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/11/11355702/prison-transgender

[namman siggins]

Great read into the Alt-Right movement. Also, be sure to check out most the links within the article.

 

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11434098/alt-right-explained

 

What's a bit sad is that the writer didn't really delve or talk about how "extreme" music helped spread the Alt-Right's beliefs.

 

I remember when I got into to the black metal, industrial and neo-folk scene, the Alt-Right's beliefs were being played with--bands playing with fascist and nazi imagery--or beginning to gain ground. Hell, that love for nationalism and traditionalism has been a big part of the black metal scene since it's beginnings.

 

The Alt-Right beliefs beginnings really mixed well with those genres--I think it mixed well because it was a fringe mixture of ideas mixed with fringe genres of music and people. It also gave people a feeling of empowerment, place and to an extent, gave them an identity; they knew why they felt like outsiders and knew who to target. The black metal, industrial and punk scenes embraced the Alt-Right's beliefs with open hearts. It's fascinating/depressing to see this movement grow through the years.

 

Hell, I almost was a part of it and at times fallen into the bullshit they spouted. It still gets me to this day! I've spent so much time--my late teens, early and mid-twenties--in those genres and being surrounded by those beliefs, it's tainted me.

EDIT: I'd be a fucking liar if I didn't listen to some of those bands that played or are white nationalists or alt-right. I've moved away heavily from them since, but man, they are a part of me whether I like it or not. Fuck this white supremacist world and the compromises I've had to make to live in it.

[osmosisch]

This shit's bananas

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2016/04/what_caused_haiti_s_cholera_epidemic_the_cdc_s_museum_knows_but_won_t_say.html

[Cordeos]

Great article that covers a lot of issues I have with the Democratic Party http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism

[Mangela Lansbury]

Great article that covers a lot of issues I have with the Democratic Party http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism

That's a great article that covers a lot of issues I have with supporters of Bernie Sanders. It's not representative of liberals as a whole, as it claims to be, but a criticism of the parochial enclaves that like to opine about how southern democrats don't know what's good for them or people in Kansas are betraying themselves.

[rohlfinator]

Maybe I'm just an obliviously smug liberal, but I don't really get the author's point with that article. It reads to me like a self-indulgent rant of the same sort he's railing against.

 

I tend to agree with Jamelle Bouie's response: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/is_liberalism_smug.html

[honestade]

This article makes my stupid brain sad https://www.propublica.org/article/how-information-graphics-reveal-your-brains-blind-spots -- How Information Graphics Reveal Your Brain’s Blind Spots (edited because Ben X makes a good point below)

[osmosisch]

I tend to agree with Jamelle Bouie's response: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/is_liberalism_smug.html

Great response!

Lansbury, would be nice if your Sanders axe remained unground in this thread.

[Ben X]

Incidentally, this forum shortens urls when they're pasted in, so it's often not possible to see what the article title is and therefore (for me at least) not particularly tempting to click through unless the person posting gives a description or at least quotes the article title...

[namman siggins]

Both writers (Bouie & Rensin) do a great job describing the problems with the Democratic party. 

It's just not one thing but a mixture of things that drove out white working class, but Bouie's reasoning I think really hits at what drove most WWC in droves. It happened with my father and the WWC that surrounded me growing up (anecdotal evidence, I know). He was a huge Democratic man until the Democratics started moving more towards blacks and he thought he was getting screwed because he was white and blacks were getting it good in welfare. A lot of the WWC people I hung out with or talked too thought the same. The smugness was one part of the drove them away, but race played a huger role.

[namman siggins]

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/474847921/the-arctic-suicides-its-not-the-dark-that-kills-you

 

For Anda, there were two choices. He could stay what he was, a village kid who spoke Greenlandic and didn't fit in, or he could change and become a Danish-speaking city kid indistinguishable from the others. At school the message was clear: Danish-speakers were better than Greenlandic-speakers; Danish stuff was cooler than Greenlandic stuff. Village kids were inferior to city kids.

 

"I was good at integrating into my class." He sighs. He knew he had to leave parts of his old self, his Kangeq self, behind. Or at least bury them beneath a more Danish exterior.

"That was how I survived." He forced himself to adjust.

 

But there were those who couldn't adjust.

[Mawd]

I'm not sure if this has been posted before but here's an NYT photo essay on the experience and context of the people who use Indonesian people smugglers to enter Australia's regional territory; often ending up in Papua New Guinea an impoverished nation with high rates of physical and sexual violence, or The Republic of Nauru a barren island once used for strip mining, now the indefinite storage of asylum seekers.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/the-impossible-refugee-boat-lift-to-christmas-island.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1

[Gormongous]

A good article on the way that well-respected historians can invent history in their attempts to wring a narrative out of it: http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2016/05/the-ethics-of-inventing-modernity.html

[clyde]

Here's a neat read about a game called Senet that was popular for 3000 years, but only in Egypt.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-06-01-why-did-ancient-egypt-spend-3000-years-playing-a-game-nobody-else-liked