The best longform journalism we consumed this week
Welcome to The Long Story, the weekly newsletter where we curate the best longform journalism on the internet. If you want this newsletter landing in your inbox every Friday, click on this handy little button:
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When Prison Nurses Must Choose Between Loyalty to Abusive Guards and Devotion to Patients
Prison nurses are usually the only people who are able to document injuries inflicted by guards, but they're often torn between the choice of reducing patient harm or protecting their coworkers. They consistently pick the latter option. “The system has ways of making [nurses'] lives so miserable that they don't stay. The odds for them being complicit with bad reports or cover-ups is really, really high for their own safety and survival.” [The Marshall Project]
From the Mouth of the Gods
The high price we pay for coffee at cafes is a running joke in the US, but Geoff Watts, cofounder of Intelligentsia Coffee, thinks we're still undervaluing its true worth. He's on a lifelong mission to funnel more money to poor farmers in Ethiopia, where the world's tastiest beans are grown. [Taste]
Did China Get Billionaires Right?
During Trump's inauguration, many watched in horror as the nation's billionaires lined up to pay tribute, and since then Trump has shown an unabashed willingness to let them funnel money into his coffers, especially through his crypto company. But even though he's arguably the most corrupt president in US history, his coziness to billionaires pales in comparison to China president Xi Jinping. In China, the billionaires are completely beholden to the government and can only maintain their wealth as long as they stay in its good graces. [Foreign Policy]
A Lawyer Freed Young Thug. Now He’s Defending Diddy
A lawyer named Brian Steel has become known for representing high profile rappers facing criminal charges, so much so that Drake named a song after him. But while his clients' music valorizes all sorts of crimes ranging from drug use to murder, Reed is famous for his unwillingness to to engage in anything that could remotely be considered a vice. "Brian doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and can't believe anybody would. He won't curse, even in court — even if he's reading from a transcript ... Brian only drinks water. His lunch is tofu or salmon, maybe, and a salad. No bread. I've never seen him eat out." [New Yorker]
60-Hour Dance Sessions, Simulated Sex, and Ketamine: Inside the World of Hardcore VR Ravers
While the metaverse is far from achieving mainstream adoption, there's a growing subculture of VR "ravers" who take drugs and then spend marathon sessions in virtual clubs. They claim the experience, from the dancing to the drug trips, is akin to visiting an IRL club. Some even manage to have simulated sex. [Wired]
Ryan Serhant Won’t Stop Until He’s No. 1
How much can a business scale when it's almost entirely dependent on the founder's personal brand? Ryan Serhant sells properties in the most competitive real estate market in the world, and yet he believes he can outmaneuver his much bigger competitors by leveraging his massive audience, which he reaches through his personal social media accounts and traditional media channels like Netflix. [The Profile]
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Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
When I entered the workforce in the mid 2000s, it was a common complaint among employers that the recent college graduates they were hiring didn't even have basic writing skills. If that was true then, then I can't imagine what it must be like to hire a young 20-something today who spent the last four years outsourcing all their critical thinking to ChatGPT. The app is used so widely that many professors have simply abandoned the Sisyphean task of trying to catch their students using it. [New York]
The unlikely country dominating sumo
Japan is the only nation in the world where sumo wresting is a professional sport, yet relatively few of its elite athletes are from Japan. By the 1970s, the country's fast-growing economy resulted in far fewer citizens wanting to enter the grueling training regimen of sumo wrestling, so it started to recruit trainees from other countries. As a result, its rankings are now dominated by men who were born in Mongolia. [Search Party]
Why most Americans have never had this bean
In the mid 1950s, the FDA banned the tonka bean from foods despite the fact that it had been used in cooking for over 100 years with no reports of negative health impacts. It was part of a larger public backlash against "chemicals" in food and specifically targeted because of the vague, anecdotal evidence that it was harmful to rats. Despite the ban, many US chefs still cook with it, though they rarely acknowledge it publicly. [Phil Edwards]
The Self-Domesticated Ape
Over tens of thousands of years, humans domesticated dozens of animal species by choosing for traits that made them more docile and less aggressive. What many of us don't realize is that we also domesticated ourselves during this same time period; sometime over the last 100,000 years we began choosing our mates based on how cooperative they were, a trend that one anthropologist coined as the "survival of the friendliest." That led to far greater prosperity and our massive dominance over every other species, including the Neanderthals. [Long Now]
Thousands of Falling Satellites Put the Atmosphere at Risk
On any given day, about three satellites reenter our atmosphere, and as they vaporize their materials are dispersed into our ozone. Scientists worry that all this debris could gradually erode Earth's protective shield, allowing more and more radiation to break through and alter the climate below. Currently, there are almost no regulations on this type of pollutant. [Bloomberg]
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