Our Top 5:

- Conspiracy or coincidence?
- A warning from the water
- Rot as resistance
- Equine dynamics
- A short history of creativity

https://longreads.com/2025/04/25/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-560/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

"The debate around elephant tourism is deeply polarizing, pitting elephant welfare against Thai tradition."

Nicola Sebastian for Atmos: (with photos by Kin Chan Coedel): https://atmos.earth/rewriting-the-relationship-between-elephant-and-keeper/

"As with the dire wolf, the rhino experiment is being watched by skeptics. They question whether genetically engineering a northern white rhino is more of an exercise in technological hubris than genuine conservation."

Elena Kazamia for Nautilus: https://nautil.us/the-last-of-their-kind-1204387/

"When justice so requires, as the legal phrase goes, we can drag our feet. And if that means getting fired, so be it." —Anonymous in @1843mag #government #doj #longreads

https://www.economist.com/1843/2025/04/17/how-to-survive-a-purge-the-secret-diary-of-a-doj-staffer?src=longreads

https://www.europesays.com/uk/43762/ Muscle Memory Isn’t What You Think It Is #Biology #BookExcerpt #Books #exercise #Fitness #Health #longreads #Sports #UK #UnitedKingdom

"As Smith sees it, hellbenders and humans are different chapters of the same story. Climate change, after all, doesn’t discriminate between species—it’s coming for all of us."

Jackie Flynn Mogensen on America’s largest #salamander, for Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2025/04/endangered-species-salamander-hurricane-helene-eastern-hellbender-bog-turtle/

"'El Puente,' which Lippard often refers to as a newsletter ('What’s the difference?' she asked me), is an extraordinary (mostly solo) work of journalism, a map of history in progress, revealing a shifting landscape." —Lucy Schiller for Columbia Journalism Review #longreads #localnews #journalism #newmexico

https://www.cjr.org/feature-2/lucy-lippard-new-mexico-galisteo-el-puente-tiny-news.php?src=longreads

"The horses and helicopters made national news, but intimate, microcosmic acts of tending and nurturing made life bearable for those who survived."

Gray Chapman writes about motherhood and mutual aid for The Bitter Southerner: https://bittersoutherner.com/2025/issue-10/mothering-at-the-end-of-the-world-asheville-hurricane-helene

"Why would a girl who had just bought herself a new swimsuit, who was about to start a new life, choose to take her own life, in such a public and dramatic fashion, so far from home?"

Giles Tremlett for The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/apr/15/mystery-girl-found-hanged-spanish-border-town-portbou

An epic article about avoiding passive listening (plus lots of interesting links at the end). https://littledoor.substack.com/p/ghosting-spotify-a-how-to-guide

Inside ArXiv
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-arxiv-most-transformative-code-science/
#ycombinator #longreads #computers #computing #coding #science #internet #education #frontiers_of_computing #academia #physics #research #scientific_research

Here's what we've got for you in our Weekly Top 5:

* Tracking greed (n+1 Magazine)
* Teaching through terminal illness (Stanford Magazine)
* Pivoting as a pastor (The New York Times)
* Reading poetry, closely (Slate)
* Breaking bad loading habits (The Atlantic)

Learn why our editors have recommended these pieces and find out which story our audience loved most.

https://longreads.com/2025/04/18/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-559/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

"So began the washing of money. With liquid soap and scalding water, wearing rubber gloves. It was so onerous that he stopped accepting $1 bills as change, leaving them on the counter."

—Joseph Goldstein for The New York Times #longreads #ocd #mentalhealth

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/nyregion/firefighter-mental-health-ocd.html?src=longreads

"People needed housing first to stabilize, then to begin rebuilding their lives. But the spreadsheet made painfully clear that any promise of affordability was a cruel fiction."

For n+1, Chelsea Kirk writes about disaster capitalism and the power of collective action: https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/diary-of-a-spreadsheet

"The trouble began in August 2017, when my boyfriend and I moved in together, and I quickly revealed myself to be an absolute ding-dong at loading the dishwasher." —Ellen Cushing for The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/04/how-to-load-dishwasher/682425/?src=longreads

"She can't understand how she got here — how her father's wealth and fame and creative energy have eluded her."

For Business Insider, Jason Guerrasio writes about the life of Stan Lee's only child: https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-life-marvel-legend-stan-lee-daughter-spiderman-xmen-business-2025-4

A prison stay pushes an obsession with water to the brink in our powerful new #longreads essay.

https://longreads.com/2025/04/15/climate-change-water-prison-ocd/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

"Our current actions as a society seem totally disconnected from any optimized, survivable future."

J. Paul Neeley for Coda: https://longreads.com/2025/04/14/when-im-125/

"To eat in modern America is to participate in not-knowing. We encounter the meal on our plates, yet behind that, much is kept hidden from us: how the animals were treated, how the land was farmed, who processed the bodies, and who butchered them."

David Cook for Oxford American: https://longreads.com/2025/04/11/know-your-burger/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Our Top 5:

• Rediscovery without reckoning
• How an icon becomes a man
• The instant that takes its time
• Life lessons from the hive
• The wicked wit of Withnail

https://longreads.com/2025/04/11/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-558/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social