Outside The Womb. I like the Longreads summary title better- "A Commercial Surrogacy Gone Wrong in Thailand." Which also is the summary.

The Lingerie Football Trap. Profile of the Legends Football League (it hasn't been called the Lingerie Football League in some time) and the women who play in it.

Uber's Phantom Cabs. The cars you see on the ( Read more... )

The Man Who Held Up The Art World. Interesting piece about a man who figured out the logistics for elaborate installation pieces.

Psychic Capital: Tech and Silicon Valley Turn to Mystics for Advice

Why Did the Schaibles Let Their Children Die? Profile of a church that is strictly no-medical-intervention; includes close descriptions of the ( Read more... )

How to Design a Metaphor.
I continue to shape and test metaphors for private-sector clients and others. In both cases, these metaphors are meant to help people to understand the unfamiliar. They aren’t supposed to make someone remark: ‘That’s beautiful.’ They’re meant to make someone realise that they’ve only been looking at one side of a thing.

( Read more... )

Why Do I Still Live In New York City? A Roundtable. The piece itself and the comments are an amazing field of self-absorbed obliviousness with occasional sharp/poignant insight. Fun!

Medium Budget Cuts and Restructuring. This is a shame, I enjoyed finding longreads at Medium and they’re moving away from that.

Thirteen Years Later, Did Spellbound ( Read more... )

Where Sunday Mass is in Mohawk. Fascinating piece about a Mohawk reservation where they've blended Catholicism and indigenous beliefs into a single practice.

When Dickens Met Dostoevsky. A really cool investigation into a great literary hoax.

Real Delusions of an Unreal Disease: A History of Morgellons. Article is respectful and intersectional; ( Read more... )

The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous. If it's not scientifically proven, is it real? This is a tough read but good questions.

The Marlboro Men of Chernivtsi. Cigarette smuggling from Ukraine.

The Python Invasion of the Everglades is Even Worse Than We Thought. What it says on the tin ( Read more... )

Interview With A Torturer. Except from a memoir by a Killing Fields survivor who now is a documentary filmmaker and interviews former Khmer Rouge torturers. The title is slightly misleading; the interview is about half of the content here, with the rest being more of a direct memoir of the Khmer Rouge takeover. All of the trigger warnings on this. ( Read more... )

Why Are Women Leaving The Tech Industry in Droves? I bet you can guess the answer!

What Kind of Man Joins the Men's Rights Movement? Fascinating and disturbing.

The Beautiful Game Igor Larianov writes about hockey, the late Soviet style vs. the modern American style, and what they mean.

Young, Attractive, and Totally Not Into Having Sex ( Read more... )

More assorted web reading.

Science And Art Meet, Unveiling Mystery And Cultural Tragedy Chemical analyses of paint in old masterpieces, and why we'll lose a lot of them as the chemicals break down.

Here's Why The Check Engine Light Is A Horrible, Terrible Thing Well, yes.

Shady XLII: Eminem in 2014 Really good look at what's left when you've ( Read more... )

The Two Michael Sams. Michael Sam the football player, and his father. This looks at the father's history, Sam Jr's history, and gets super-judgy about how Sam Jr has distanced himself from his family. To me, reading it, his decision is perfectly reasonable; ymmv.

The Passing of the Indians Behind Glass. On museums moving away from using dioramas ( Read more... )