'Nobody will be held accountable for a double murder.'

Hi 👋 

We’re back to The Lazy Reader, where we curate some of the best longform articles from across the Web ✨

Nothing much to say this week, but here’s a question: Have you noticed a pullback in longform? Not just in the number of pieces being published, but also in the overall interest that we have for it? Speaking just for me, it’s been feeling a lil bit of a chore to look for and read through articles—and I’ve never felt that way before.

Just scouting to see if I’m alone here.

In any case, some choice picks from last week’s newsletter:

• Vanity Fair Majoring in Crime

• MacLean’s How Astrology Became the New Therapy

• The Fence Summa Cum Laude

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 is an incredible longform story that, in my opinion and in many important ways, is the quintessential read if you’re into True Crime.

At its core is an existential question for not just the genre but also for law enforcement and the law. Here is a double murder that not just ended the lives of two people in their prime, but also upended that of those close to them. One man was originally and imprisoned for the crime, but set free on the back of another man’s confession. This second man’s conviction has now also been reversed, and he walks free.

The two victims remain dead. Their families remain wanting for justice. What gives?

Unfortunately, this story doesn’t provide any clean answers (the best ones rarely do, after all). It invests must of its energy and wordcount into showing, in painfully intricate detail, how the truth is so easily bent to serve different purposes. How mistakes can be blown out of proportion to drum up doubt, and how the law isn’t actually an endeavor for finding justice.

On a procedural note: The Atavist is, as always, delivers journalistic excellence. There’s an a major micro-focus here—the lives of the criminals and their teams, as opposed to the more macro look at the social and legal environment of the time—but that’s all in service of the narrative. It also gives the writer a great opportunity to flex his research skills, obtaining quotes and details that I imagine were buried under reams of documents or behind hours of painful interviews.

The Iran War Is Unfathomably Depraved | Current Affairs, Free

To note upfront: This is a reported essay that doesn’t try to hide its convictions behind some misguided veil of objectivity.

Some might find that off-putting, as not something journalists (or even writers more broadly) should dabble in. I vehemently disagree. I am not an aseptic writer. As far as I’m concerned, I write for the people, for the public. I give them a voice and I serve as their eyes into circles that they wouldn’t normally be allowed to look. This essay does just that—and comes with a nice history lesson to boot. It very beautifully encapsulates many of what I feel about this current Iran shitshow.

To those who are inclined to skip: It’s easy to dismiss this article as just some hodgepodge of left-wing talking points. I encourage you to just take it as it is and join the writer as he tries to situate the current conflict in a broader historical, economic, and social milieu.

How a Hashtag Went Viral—and Incited a Military Intervention | WIRED, $

On a related note (but only tangentially so, I acknowledge) is this piece from WIRED, which traces Boko Haram from a backwater terrorist upstart group to what is now a widely known extremist group that has found itself on the blacklist of many of the world’s most powerful countries.

(Disclaimer: This is a book excerpt and ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger. I typically push these lower down into the newsletter, but I like what this story tries to say).

It’s hard to give a capsule pitch of this story without just actually putting everything on here, so I’ll just get straight at what the soul of the piece is: Social media—twitter, in this case—is able to manufacture outrage to such an extreme degree that it can rope in the U.S. Secretary of State, President and the entire military establishment. A few well-placed tweets from some well-meaning, but overly eager, people can make mountains out of molehills (loathe as I am to turn toward tired euphemisms).

Of course, that’s not to say that the kidnapped girls don’t constitute a massive breach of humanity and shouldn’t have been addressed. Of course it should have. But I’m not sure propping up the U.S. armed forces as the world’s police force is the right answer, too.

Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate | ProPublica, Free

Since we’re on the topic of politics anyway…

This is incredible investigative work from ProPublica (as always!), which spent almost a year compiling these arcane regulatory filings and disclaimer documents from Trump appointees and following up with their associates and previous companies. I can only imagine how mind-numbing it must have been! It must be on purpose that these documents are needlessly long and difficult to read and understand. They must actually want to deter people from digging through them. All the flowers to ProPublica for powering through.

The result, as we see here, is immaculate—not to mention extremely important. Some of Trump’s highest-ranking appointees, including those in the Defense Department, have crucial conflicts of interest with the companies that they’re supposed to be regulating. It’s not completely clear if they’ve recused themselves from the important conversations, but just the fact that there are connections there is concerning.

A few weeks ago, I shared an article that touched on the revolving door between the government and the industry, with ex-Congresspeople going on to hold high seats in companies. This makes for friendly relations between the government and corporations. This story just serves to strengthen that notion.

Impressive work from WIRED here, showing all of us different ways in which we can report out stories that are fun, yes, but also important and with strong social impact.

At some point in this story, the writer creates her own Roblox character to explore the world that was once the domain of a storied online fascist. Her experience doesn’t necessarily reflect the worst of the radicalizing culture in Roblox, but it’s not nothing. And through her character, she’s also able to get to better know one of the people who had played a key part in this online domain, serving as somewhat of a lieutenant to their authoritarian leader.

If all you take away from this story is a cautionary tale about how online games can be dangerous for kids, exposing them to right-wing, hyper-conservative, and radicalizing thought, then you might need to look a bit deeper.

Toward the end of this story, WIRED poses the question of online radicalization to a listserv of researchers—highly educated experts on the matter. It doesn’t take long for the room to devolve into heated debates, aggressive disagreements, and even name-calling and inflammatory memes. It turns toxic real quick, so to speak, and some even choose to just leave the listserv completely.

At its core, I think this story shows how easy it is for online spaces—gaming or otherwise—to become a breeding ground for some of the worst impulses humanity has to offer.

Saving the Girl with Dementia | Nautilus, Free

Really good science story here: Anchored on and fully revolves around the human experience, but also giving the readers enough scientific context on the matter. And not just on the biology of the disease, but also the intricacies of how drugs get made and approved in the U.S.

At the heart of this story is a girl with Sanfilippo syndrome, an extremely rare genetic disease that eats away at the brain, in turn compromising their development and cognitive ability. It’s been characterized many times as Alzheimer’s disease for kids. The girl’s parents put up a heroic fight: They formed a foundation for her and raised money to fund the development of a gene therapy—definitely not a cheap affair. Trials for these drugs can run into the dozens (if not hundreds) of millions, all without the assurance that you’ll have something good enough for the market.

And incidentally, that’s what happens here: The drug gets rejected by the FDA. But there is hope yet, since the rejection wasn’t linked to anything inherent to the drug, but was instead driven by manufacturing problems. We’ll see in the future how this drug fares.

The Frenchie Revolution | Vanity Fair, $

This story is deceptive. The focus on Frenchies, the very cute banner photo—they set the story up to feel light-hearted. But that’s very quickly dashed when the very first woman the story follows mentions that she feels the need to bring a firearm to one of these dog shows, fearing for her safety.

What follows is a dive into the surprisingly political and frankly ridiculous world of French bulldog shows, where some coat colors aren’t just deemed inferior, but also illegal and immoral, enough to foster a mob mentality of sorts against owners with dogs of a certain color.

When a Psychic Reading Costs You $740,000 | GQ, $

Another interesting piece that seems light-hearted on the surface, but then quickly devolves into something more sinister. Here, GQ follows a woman who, despite seeming like a sensible person, falls for a cookie-cutter scam that ultimately drains her life savings—more than $700,000 down the drain. Not to mention, this “psychic” also causes her much distress, with threats to her personal safety and to her family.

The story also dives into the history of such scams and finds that victims tend to have a bad track record of getting back what was taken from them. The woman at the center of this story sees some limited success, but at least within the confines of the article, never really bounces back.

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! 👋