'Chemsex orgies almost every week'

Hi 👋 

Another Monday, another Lazy Reader reading list ✨

The news cycle the past week was extra exhausting, no? I’ve been trying to refine my engine for sourcing longform articles, just so I won’t have to wade through the muck of my socials timeline every time I’m on the hunt for my next read. What’s your favorite place to get your longreads? (Aside from TLR, of course!)

If you missed last week’s email, here are some choice picks:

• Esquire A Shark Attack and a Terrorist Bombing: This Is a Love Story

• MacLean’s Inside the Fight for the Ring of Fire

• ProPublica The Landlord & the Tenant

As with last week, please let me know what you think of the list this week by voting in the poll below.

Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

This has got to be one of the craziest health stories I’ve ever read.

ProPublica, as usual, does incredible investigative work here to look at how doctors and hospitals in Florida violate women’s bodies (Black women, mostly), forcing them to undergo unwanted C-sections for the sake of the fetus. And in many cases, the impetus for the surgery is dubious—it’s not clear that it would be the best and only way to deliver the baby safely.

Worse, still, is that the courts have gotten involved, giving this entire thing a sheen of lawfulness. Women in Florida are now, it looks, legally obligated to agree to a C-section even if they don’t want to, as long as their medical team thinks it’s the best recourse. In a country that claims to highly value individual liberties and freedoms, this seems very wrong.

There’s a lot of arrogance and hubris throughout this story, coming largely from judges and doctors who, supposedly, have the patients’ best interests at heart. Unfortunately, and sadly, none of this is shocking—ask around and you’ll easily find someone who has a similar experience with their healthcare or legal professional.

Death of a Lobsterman | Esquire, $ 

Some stories are just simply great narratives, and that’s enough to make them stellar pieces of journalism. Such is the case here. And while there are clear lessons to be drawn, Esquire makes no real effort to highlight them or to zoom out and find some grand universal moral to take away.

This is a story about inept local law enforcement, sure, and it highlights the difficulties that underserved communities face. But at its core, it’s really just a disgustingly well-told story, evoking profound and complex emotions through expert prose and dogged reporting.

How the Awful Stuff Won | The New York Review, $

Swinging wildly in the opposite direction, here is a piece that is more moral than storytelling. And at times that type of article turns me off because it can feel preachy and way too persuasive—which I think journalists have no business being. (In my opinion, reporters need to first demonstrate that they’ve put in massive research effort before they deserve to wax poetic and philosophical in their articles.)

And there is a certain degree of that here, for sure, but I think that’s what the NYR is for, anyway. The writer here reviews two books and argues that the internet, accelerated by social media, has wholly ruptured the social fabric. There is no “real world” now—everything that happens online is consequential enough to heavily affect the offline plane.

Escape or Die | The New Yorker, $

Another article that’s straight up a compelling narrative, a specialty of The New Yorker. Here, the writer tells the tale of the M.V. Albedo, a cargo ship, and its capture by Somali pirates. I’m sure there are dozens of cases like these per year, but James Verini has a way of digging into the human psyche in times of crisis, highlighting how terror shapes us—both as individuals and as communities—and forces onto us choices that will reveal who we truly are.

I know that sounds like a lot of poetic bullshit, but trust me: Read the story and tell me I’m wrong.

Office Wars | MacLean’s, Free

Loved this one. MacLean’s is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.

Like most of the outfit’s stories, this piece is sharp and well-researched, with prose that’s clean but also not stiff. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but makes sure that you see how much work was put into it. It’s really masterful writing.

The subject may not seem the most pressing thing—especially given the chaos we’re in now—but it for sure resonates with the paper’s more professional, more liberal readership. And it’s not as if the topic is wholly unimportant; it’s still worth a serious discussion.

Inside the Seattle Clinic that Treats Tech Addiction like Heroin, and Clients Detox for up to 16 Weeks | Fortune, $

Unwieldy headline aside, this is a timely piece from Fortune, which is also a great place for an analysis like this to run, given its more conservative, business-minded readership. More than any other sector, that particular profile needs to start seriously grappling with the moral and ethical questions of social media and the tech that enables it.

All of that said, I do wish this story had gone deeper. If my assessment is correct, the piece was built off of a handful of light interviews and some digging through case files. Not light work by any means, but I feel that more could have been done. The narrative backbone, too, felt a bit weak. But maybe I’m nitpicking.

Should realtors—or property brokers, or people looking to sell their houses—be required to disclose heinous crimes like murders to potential buyers?

That question is at the heart of this piece, but in true The Atavist fashion, it’s presented through a sprawling, well-researched narrative that not only highlights the real, human dimensions of this dilemma, but also shows how complicated an answer can be. The prose, as always, is delicious, and does wonders in taking you along and making you feel what the writer wants to make you feel.

There is a tortured family at the core of this narrative, and the hardships that they go through after moving to this house really make you root for them. It’s extremely easy to empathize with them, to be on their corner, to feel their frustration at the broker, their exasperation at the courts. To feel their hope when the case moves forward, their disappointment when it stalls. At least for me, that’s more than enough to call this a five-star read.

Many years back, the Philippines became notorious on the global stage because of President Duterte’s sweeping war on drugs, a campaign that quickly turned bloody and left thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people dead. The entire episode landed Duterte in ICC custody and left the entire country torn, not just by the violence but also by an extremely polarized political landscape.

At the time, Duterte got popular support for his war because it was allegedly a matter of safety and security. But anyone who had half a brain (and who had read even just a tiny bit of world history) knew that it was a farce, and that it was essentially just an effort to thin out Manila’s urban poor population.

This essay is proof of that. At the height of Duterte’s war on drugs, many of these cosmopolitan circles—mostly among the upper middle class and professional groups—continued their substance-fueled parties. They’ve learned to couch their addiction in language of care and harm reduction, which is why I’ve grown leery of these types of rhetoric. It’s always felt so performative to me.

The writer participated and benefited from this system, and I don’t think there was enough accountability for that. But I guess this piece, despite it being nearly a decade late, is a good way to start.

Thanks for reading! Please, please reach out if you have feedback, suggestions, or questions. Alternatively, you can fill out this super quick survey form. I promise it won’t even take five minutes of your time, and it’ll be a HUGE help!

ALSO: I know some of the stories I recommend might be behind paywalls, and maybe I can help you with access to those. Send me a message and let’s see what we can do 😊

Until next Monday! 👋