The best longform journalism we consumed this week
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Let’s jump into it…
The group chats that changed America
Starting in 2020, many of America's richest tech titans reduced their output on social media and redirected it toward private group chats, mostly on Signal and Whatsapp. Given that many of these same people began shifting toward the political right during this time period, it's possible they fell victim to an informational feedback loop that made it easier for them to ignore Republicans' growing authoritarianism. [Semafor]
Subtitling Your Life
I'm a firm believer that the usefulness of most AI tech is wildly overhyped, but it's played an incredible role in advancing audio transcription apps, which have grown so accurate and responsive that deaf people can hold conversations without missing a beat. Recently, two companies came out with eye glasses that can display transcripts on the lenses, and they work seamlessly enough that you wouldn't even be able to tell the person you're speaking to is deaf. [New Yorker]
The freestylist
Most chess champions are only famous within the chess community. Magnus Carlson somehow managed to become a global superstar who regularly appears on magazine covers and is recognized out in public. Now he's semi-retired and leveraging his celebrity to go to war with the chess establishment over what he considers anachronistic rules. His ultimate goal is to make the sport more versatile and spontaneous. [Spiegel]
Generative AI is reshaping South Korea’s webcomics industry
Web comics are a huge industry in South Korean, with some series followed by millions of rabid fans. Recently, a number of AI companies made it incredibly easy for one to illustrate panels with no artistic skills, and the top artists in the country are divided over whether these tools are a boon to the craft or merely cheapen it. [Technology Review]
Devin Nunes, Steven Biss, and the Laptop of MAGA Secrets
About a decade ago, pro-Trump figures started consistently suing media organizations with frivolous, expensive libel lawsuits. Nearly all of these cases were eventually thrown out, but their entire point was to intimidate and malign those who exposed them of wrong-doing — in effect making them more risk-averse. Instrumental to this cause was a lawyer named Steven Scott Biss, a MAGA enthusiast who often didn't charge his high-profile clients and took on far more cases than he could actually handle on his own. Then in 2023, two things happened in quick succession: he suffered a massive stroke and his laptop, with all its sensitive client information, was stolen from his office. Soon afterward, many of his clients learned that the money they'd wired him for various services had completely disappeared. [Telos]
The Texas County Where ‘Everybody Has Somebody in Their Family’ With Dementia
In a small county near the southern tip of Texas, the elderly suffer from Alzheimer's at double the national rate. Part of this has to do with the convergence of environmental factors that increase the likelihood of Alzheimer's — high poverty, high rates of heart disease, etc... — but it could also be attributed to something called the “Hispanic paradox," where people of Hispanic origin tend to live longer than their non-Hispanic counterparts. It certainly doesn't help that Texas spends less per-capita on Alzheimer's research and care than most other states. [The Atlantic]
'Algorithmic fatigue'
Consumers have mostly come to peace with the idea that their content consumption is governed by algorithms these days, but they can quickly become agitated when they feel like the algorithm is increasingly serving them with bad selections. Many longtime Spotify users have begun complaining in recent years that its music recommendations have been erratic, often surfacing songs that aren't even remotely related to their own interests. Some former employees say the problem started when it fired many of its human curators and became too dependent on machine learning. [Business Insider]
How Nearly a Century of Happiness Research Led to One Big Finding
It's only within the last 40 years or so when scientists began seriously studying what makes a person happy or unhappy. Are some people just born with the psychological ability to be happy, or can happiness be induced through a series of exercises? Most experiments yielded only marginal improvements, but scientists did land on one key insight: our happiness is largely dependent on our relationships with the people around us. In other words, how much time we spend with spouses, friends, and family is highly correlated with our own sense of worth. Further research found that increasing the frequency of interactions with acquaintances or even complete strangers can have an outsized effect. [NYT]
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“I Am Making the World My Confessor”
In 1902, a 19-year-old living in Montana published a memoir that immediately captured the attention of the press, in part because it openly confessed her bisexuality at a time when that topic was very much taboo. She became an overnight celebrity who was often followed around by the tabloid reporters. After her early death in 1929, she then fell into almost complete obscurity, and it's only recently that her books were reissued. [Public Domain Review]
MAGA doesn't build
After Trump's win in November, the business community — and even some centrist liberals — were hopeful that he'd cut through bureaucratic red tape and allow them to build unencumbered. Instead, Trump's administration attacked the very institutions that fuel our prosperity and launched a culture war with absolutely no economic upside. While conservatives have always overestimated the power of free markets and underestimated the importance of government institutions, the MAGA movement embraces neither and is solely focused on punishing its perceived enemies. [Noahpinion]
Nobody Has Felt the Office Market’s Pain More Than This Guy
Office occupancy has been cratering ever since the pandemic as a greater percentage of the workforce grew used to working from home. This left the owners of office buildings holding the bag, and no one is holding a bigger bag than Brandon Shorenstein, the scion of a family real estate dynasty that owns millions of square feet of office space. [WSJ]
Why ‘Margin Call’ remains Wall Street’s favorite movie — and the best indictment of it
"So, what you're telling me is that the music is about to stop, and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of...capitalism." The movie Margin Call made a small splash when it hit theaters in 2011, but it's since become a cult classic, one I've watched myself at least a dozen times. The dialogue is sharp without being showy, and the star-studded cast is putting in the best performances of their careers. It'll go down in history as the best movie to capture the stakes of the 2008 financial crisis. [Semafor]
Secret Deals, Foreign Investments, Presidential Policy Changes: The Rise of Trump’s Crypto Firm
During Trump's first administration, both Congress and the courts refused to police the blatant conflicts of interest that came from him simultaneously owning a private company while also running the federal government. Now, Trump is more emboldened than ever and armed with a crypto currency that allows anyone to funnel money directly into his pockets with very little paper trail. It's not an exaggeration to say he is the most corrupt president in US history. [NYT]
Inside the spectacular rise and crash of India’s largest EV company
In India, small scooters far outsell traditional cars, and an EV scooter company called Ola has been hailed by some as the country's version of Tesla. But ever since its launch, Ola has been plagued with technical failures, with customers posting social media videos of their scooters bursting into flames and suffering other malfunctions. Many of the company's former employees blame the product's rushed rollout and the CEO's penchant for angry outbursts that alienate employees. [Rest of World]
The Most Dangerous Building in Manhattan
A Manhattan skyscraper called the Citicorp Center opened in 1978 and was hailed by the press as an “acrobatic act of architecture” because of the sophisticated engineering that went into balancing the building on what were essentially stilts. It was only after its opening that the structural engineer realized there was a fatal flaw in the design that would cause the entire building to collapse if hit by sufficiently high winds. The engineer then faced two choices: stay silent and hope for the best, or risk reputational ruin by alerting the building’s owners of his mistake. [Veritasium]
Maddow’s Back! The Resistance Is Rising! So Why Is MSNBC’s Future Uncertain?
MSNBC is among the channels being spun off from Comcast, and as a result it'll no longer be able to rely on the news gathering of its sister network NBC. The question its executives face now is whether to build its own newsroom or simply lean into the "resistance" punditry for which it's primarily known. [Politico]
My other newsletter: Jeff Bezos is a drag on the Washington Post's business
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