The best longform journalism we consumed this week

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Let’s jump into it…

Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared.

The Texas government refused to study changes in health outcomes in the wake of its abortion ban, so Propublica compiled its own data. It found that pregnancy-related sepsis nearly doubled after the ban, mostly due to doctors being afraid to perform life-saving abortions because they fear a 99-year prison sentence. [Propublica]

How Greg Gutfeld Became the Bill Maher of Fox News — And Toppled Fallon and Colbert in the Ratings

Back in the 90s, when Jay Leno was at his height, it would have been unthinkable that any network late night show could be out-watched by a cable news competitor. But not only does Greg Gutfeld draw in bigger audiences than the Jimmy Fallons and Stephen Colberts of the world — at least on linear TV — he does so without A-list celebrity guests or the ability to be funny. [Variety]

The women who made America’s microchips and the children who paid for it

With the trade wars heating up, the US is spending billions of dollars to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to our shores. But many labor activists worry that we haven't learned our lessons from the 1970 and 80s, when Silicon Valley plant workers were exposed to dangerous chemicals that caused a significant increase in miscarriages and birth defects. They're asking what our government is doing to prevent new hires from suffering a similar fate. [The Verge]

The Cat’s Meat Man: Feeding Felines in Victorian London

This is the most bizarre story I've read in a while! In late 1800s London, about 1,000 men roamed the streets pushing wheelbarrows full of horse meat. They were called "cat's meat men" and were the main food supply for the hundreds of thousands of pet cats in the city. Some walked over 30 miles a day. [Public Domain Review]

Why the Broccolis Gave Up Bond

When Amazon bought MGM for $8.5 billion a few years ago, the sale included the licensing rights to the James Bond filmography. What it didn't include was creative control of future films and TV shows; that was still held by a family that had inherited those rights from their deceased father. After years of unsuccessful attempts to get that family to sign off on new Bond projects, Amazon finally threw up its hands and bought them out, possibly for as much as $1 billion. So here's the question: is James Bond actually worth $9.5 billion? Probably not. [Puck]

Why China Will Never Surrender the South China Sea

Why is China so focused on conquering a bunch of islands that are barely livable and have no natural resources? Basically, it wants to claim ownership of the entire South China sea — for economic and military reasons — and these islands help it justify that claim. [Johnny Harris]

How a Decades-Old Loophole Lets Billionaires Avoid Medicare Taxes

If you're American and reading these words, chances are you pay Medicare taxes, which are automatically deducted out of every paycheck. That is, unless you're a billionaire, in which case your army of tax lawyers found a way for you to pay $0 toward Medicare. It's just another example of how these people are bleeding our country dry just so they can retain more wealth than a single person could spend in a thousand lifetimes. [Propublica]

How de-aging in movies got so good

For years, Hollywood's de-aging special effects weren't able to escape the uncanny valley, which left actors looking creepy and unrealistic. But a new AI company did away with the painstaking work of scanning an actor's face and editing in the younger features after filming; instead, the tool reimagines the actor's face pretty much in real-time, which makes the finished product much more realistic. [Vox]

Adventures in the genetic time machine

Scientists are getting better and better at retrieving DNA from ancient organisms that lived hundreds of thousands — or sometimes millions — of years ago. It's not only telling us more about our planet's past, but also aiding in the development of crops that can withstand climate change. After all, this isn't the first time the Earth has experienced extreme warmth. [Technology Review]

How the world’s biggest online dollar store got sucked into Trump’s trade war.

For decades, China served as a manufacturing hub for the parts that found their way into US products. But then a few years ago a Chinese company realized it could exploit an obscure tax loophole and start directly selling products to Americans, often at prices that undercut competitors. Thus, Temu was born. [Bloomberg]

Georgia Touts Its Medicaid Experiment as a Success. The Numbers Tell a Different Story.

Georgia implemented a Medicaid work requirement aimed at incentivizing its poorest citizens into getting jobs. New data shows that it neither increased employment nor lowered the uninsured rate. It did however cost $86 million to implement, with most of that money flowing toward consultants. [Propublica]

Mike White’s Mischievous Vision for “The White Lotus”

In many ways, the success of The White Lotus was a complete fluke; HBO was desperate for new programming during the pandemic, and creator Mike White happened to have an idea for a show set in Hawaii, a remote locale that made it easier for the staff to quarantine. He still doesn't quite know why the show amassed such a devoted following. "Somehow, I got on the last helicopter out of the dystopia that is Hollywood." [New Yorker]

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Money Doesn't Buy FaZe

FaZe Clan was the first esports company to be listed on the Nasdaq, and its members collectively amassed over 130 million YouTube subscribers. But what should have been a rags-to-riches success story was upended due to bad management and creator exploitation. It's now a cautionary tale for why young creators should be skeptical of fast-talking investors who promise to transform them into billionaires. [Golfcart]

Dating app cover-up: How Tinder, Hinge and their corporate owner keep rape under wraps

A serial rapist found many of his victims on the dating app Hinge, even after several women had reported his assaults to the app. An investigation found that Match Group — the parent company that owns Hinge and several of the world's most popular dating apps — routinely ignores these kinds of reports and allows abusers to keep their profiles active. [The 19th]

This site lets you spy on people. Are you one of them?

Millions of internet-connected cameras all across the world either use a default password or aren't password protected at all. This means that any random person could set up a vast surveillance apparatus that monitors the daily lives of unsuspecting subjects. If your apartment building uses these unprotected security cameras — and many apartment buildings do — it'd be relatively easy for thieves to monitor when you enter and exit your home. [Christophe]

The Rich Pay Top Dollar to Get Clean. What Happens When That Isn’t Enough?

Upscale rehab treatment centers cost upwards of $80,000 a month and offer every luxury amenity you can imagine. But there's no industry oversight of these companies, and a series of recent lawsuits exposed how little their executives care about helping their rich clientele get sober. [WSJ]

Merkel’s two lives

When the Berlin Wall fell, Angela Merkel was 35 years old and had spent her entire adult life as a chemist. Almost immediately, she was thrust into politics as Western capitalism swept through the Eastern half of the country. Her experience navigating both worlds — communist and capitalist — made her uniquely qualified to unite a fractured Europe as it faced down a resurgence in Russian aggression. [LRB]

The making and remaking of Karl Marx’s Capital

Karl Marx's Capital Volume I is considered to be one of the most influential books of the modern age, and yet in the 158 years since its publication it's only been translated into English three times. Why? Because translating Marx not only requires fluency in both English and German, but also a mastery of the economic terms and political philosophies that Marx steeped himself in during the 16 years he spent writing it. To make the task of translation even more daunting, there's an entire army of warring scholars just waiting to rip your interpretation apart. [The Nation]

How Whales Found Peace in War

During WWII, humans were so busy killing each other that they temporarily stopped killing whales. Scientists recently discovered a Smithsonian archive of specimens taken from whales that were killed once hunting resumed, and their analysis of the stress hormones in those specimens has altered our understanding of how humans impact the lives of wild animals. Basically, our mere presence is putting them under constant stress, which has a profoundly negative effect on their health and well-being. [Biographic]

Students are doubling as cheap labor for Taiwan’s semiconductor factories

Taiwan produces 60% of the semi-conductors that are found in just about every modern device, and in order to meet demand it lures students from all across Asia for "work study" programs that amount to little more than manual labor. Very little of what they learn in these jobs can be used in higher-paying engineering roles. [Rest of World]

Mike Danson, the Wigan warrior with a plan to challenge Bloomberg

Bloomberg is the world's largest information company, in large part because it's able to charge $23,000 for its main Terminal, which is considered a necessary resource for virtually anyone working in the financial sector. Now, an up-and-coming UK company called GlobalData is buying up media outlets and data firms in an effort to supplant its much larger rival. [The Times]

Growing Up Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch is 92 and will almost certainly die in the near future. When he does, control of the Fox empire will be split among four progeny, three of whom are alarmed by the rightward tilt of the company. Their voting power is not only likely to alter the course of the company, but will also seismically impact conservative politics across the entire Western world. [The Atlantic]

The hardest working font in Manhattan

One day, a designer stumbled upon a font he'd never noticed or heard of before; at first, he didn't even know its name. But once he knew of it, he began to notice it everywhere, and his obsession compelled him to track it to an engraving machine that was popular in the early-to-mid 20th century. [Arseluna]

The Long Flight to Teach an Endangered Ibis Species to Migrate

Every year, a small group of scientists sets off on a seemingly insane quest: to convince a flock of almost-extinct birds to follow a microlight plane from Austria to Spain. The goal is to teach these birds the migratory paths of their ancestors, and it's sort of working. [New Yorker]

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