“White supremacy welcomed his rage, and that made it irresistible.” In prison, white supremacist literature is required reading:
To survive the box, you learn to fish. People on the outside call it solitary confinement, but it isn’t really, not even at a place like Upstate Correctional Facility, the supermax prison in Malone, New York, ten minutes from the Canadian border. It’s true at Upstate you’re locked down twenty-four hours a day. It’s true you spend twenty-three of those hours in a small concrete and steel cage, and that the twenty-fourth hour is spent in another concrete and steel cage that’s connected to, but even smaller than, the first. It’s true that for the whole time you’re at Upstate, you might not touch another human being, and it’s true you won’t see another person except through a tight mesh of steel wire and reinforced glass. And it’s true you might be locked down for years.
But man is a social animal, and even in a place like Upstate, people will find a way to communicate.
— Joseph Margulies, lithub.com/in-prison…
AI is a power tool, and like any power tool it’s dangerous if you’re careless with it. You can be the guy who warned everyone that a table saw can cut your fingers off and still lose a finger one day.…
— Don’t Write With AI, Say People Who Write With AI [Will Oremus / The Atlantic]
Gerbil — Journalist Allen Salkin’s multipart investigative podcast about that rumor about Richard Gere.
“A deep dive into Hollywood’s most infamous rumor — and what it reveals about celebrity, gossip, power, the internet and our own brains.”
I’m not sure about this podcast but I enjoyed the first episode and Salkin’s interview on Dan Savage’s podcast so I’ll stick with it for at least one more episode and see where it goes.
A Reckoning in Springfield [Stephanie McCrummen / The Atlantic]
Trucker Jack Buhring wrestles with trauma after he accidentally struck and killed 20-year-old Haitian legal immigrant Pierre Damas Bel on the highway outside Springfield, Ohio.
Bel, who had never violated any law and who had a solid job, was among the Haitians in Springfield ordered to check in to ICE field offices and wear ankle monitors.
Following the accident Bel’s father put out a statement saying “after my son was outfitted with this ankle monitor, he felt like he was treated like an animal.”
In 2024, the despicable J.D. Vance spoke the hateful lie that Haitians in Springfield were eating cats and dogs. When Vance was called out on the lie, he admitted it and said he was right to do it.
The People of Utah vs. Kevin O’Leary [Josh Dzieza / The Verge] Mr. Wonderful wanted to build the world’s largest data center. The neighbors had other ideas.
A friend uses “Gladys Kravitz” to describe a certain type of busybody, and that is much better than calling these people “Karens.” I have known many Karens — actual women named Karen — and I can’t recall ever having a problem with any of them.
Indeed, if you’re starting a new job and being introduced to your teammates and one of them is named Karen, remember that person. She is a good egg and will be your friend. She will show you how things work, give you credit for your work, cover for you when you screw up, and occasionally bring delicious banana bread.
How do you solve a problem like a paywall?
The current state of paywalls means everybody loses, writes journalist CT Jones. Readers find it difficult to gain access to articles. News organizations, who are desperate for readers, are pushing those readers away. AI and SEO slop fills the gap — as does propaganda.
Journalists need to get paid or journalism doesn’t happen. Jones writes about his experience with “paywall backlash,” which taught him yet again that “some of the loudest critics [of paywalls] don’t see reporting as labor at all. They see journalists and writers as obstacles, standing in the way of what they already believe. It’s why people were upset that I said writing my article was hard and it’s why they chastised me for assuming people would read past the paywall or even click on the article. Because they didn’t see my article as work.”
A partial solution would be to make it easy for readers to pay a nominal amount for just one article. In the days before the Internet ate journalism, I could walk into a newsstand, browse the racks, find a single issue of a magazine or newspaper with an interesting article, and buy that one issue. There is no equivalent on the Internet — you have to subscribe and ending the subscription is painful.