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Hi 👋 

Welcome back to The Lazy Reader, where we curate some of the best longform writing from across the Web ✨

Plus points for you if you got the—admittedly very niche—reference in this week’s newsletter title.

(If you didn’t, that’s fine: It’s from an alternate title of R.F. Kuang’s Babel, which I read last year and has since been on my mind. The thing is, even among fans of the book, this alternate title doesn’t seem to be well-known. Which is unfortunate, because I feel like it gives a very important lens through which the book can be read. But I digress—sorry for the very long tangent.)

In any case, this week’s TLR is one of those editions that’s actually ridiculously stacked. I had another good reading week last week, which was great for my sanity but bad for my deadlines. Cut it way too close for comfort on a couple of those…

But we survived the work week and here we are.

Before we jumped into the reading list, if you missed last week’s TLR, here’s a few choice selections:

• A profound question on what progress means or looks like.

• A father’s love warped into obsession.

• A 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner

As always, 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!

PS - Thank you to 1440 Media for supporting this week’s edition again! Please, please, please consider clicking their ad after the fold below, or at the banners at the top and bottom of this newsletter. It’s free, really easy, and it really helps me out!

Story in Spotlight

In a previous life, I was a very prolific activist. (This was back in uni, when I didn’t yet have to contend with the realities of life in a violently capitalist society).

I’m not proud that I’ve drifted away from my civic duties, but it is what it is, and I’m definitely working on getting to a place that will allow me to be more socially active again. This story took me back to those days spent in formation with my fellow activists, to the streets where we’d get tear-gassed and water-cannoned. And it revived in me an age-old dilemma: Will all my shouting and marching and sloganeering actually result in concrete, physical progress for those I claim to be fighting for? Or am I just wasting my time going up against forces that can’t even be bothered?

How far will my pact of non-violence take me?

I’d never really answered those questions, so I went into this story with a deep hunger, looking for someone else to answer them for me. Through that lens, this story was disappointing. But if your goal is to push your liberal sensibilities about social justice to the limit, this story is brilliant.

The writer doesn’t even pretend that this piece is an investigation, that it’s a stringently journalistic endeavor. Often, after all, people in the margins can’t afford to abide some arbitrary rules of objectivity (which itself is a myth anyway, but I digress). Instead, he packages his arguements in what I think is the most moving essay I’ve read this year.

The writer takes you through his own personal history in the West Bank and, in parallel, through the history of the painfully one-sided “war” that Israel has waged on Palestine. He looks at how the violence violently chipped away not just his own life and circles and memories, but also the Palestinian society. The essay reaches a clear (at least I think it’s clear) but understated climax that sits in your chest and buries itself in your consciousness, hopefully shaping your ideas of protest and activism.

If you consider yourself a socially aware person, this is one of the most important stories that you’ll ever read.

Long, heavy, difficult. But extremely crucial. I’d say an hour is enough.

The Longform List

Is True Crime Keeping Me in Prison? | Vulture, $

Absolutely incredible essay, made even more impressive by the fact that it was written by an incarcerated journalist. People deprived of liberty face strong prejudice, so I really admire the bravery and skill that this took. And it’s quite the lens, too: I’ve always maintained here that True Crime, despite being a genre that I like, is predatory. This piece drives that point home very powerfully, and from an unexpected vantage point. There’s a lot to digest here but I think I just want to highlight how powerful the Media is. Makes ethics and professional responsibility much more important.

Open Your Mouth and You’re Dead | Outside Magazine, $

Read this while at the gym and I was yelping so many times throughout that the guy beside me had to ask if I was okay. And even after reading through this, I can’t for the life of me understand the impulse to freedive. But I will say that the sport makes for one hell of a story. I typically prefer prose that’s respectful to its characters, but I think the writer’s irreverence here goes a very long way in making this piece sing.

“The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades | Vanity Fair, $

Been a while since we’ve had Mr. Langewiesche on the newsletter. That pause was at least partly on purpose (got turned off by how he exoticizes anything that isn’t white and American—but I digress). But I’ve decided that he shines the best when he writes about things that don’t have much do to with culture. Like this one, about a very tragic ship accident. As usual, his prose is unmatched here, and it’s impressive how he deeply he dives into nearly 500 pages of transcripts to come up with this piece. Just wish he zoomed out more and turned it into a bit of an investigation, looking at the systemic and leadership failures that led to the disaster.

The New Mecca | GQ, $

Speaking of exoticizing…

This story would have been an easy entry into my all-time favorite list—if only every other sentence weren’t dripping with racism and American exceptionalism. We get it. It’s borderline unbelievable that Dubai can muster this cosmopolitan Mecca of some sort. Lots of irritating tropes here, lots of moments when the writer just operates under the assumption that the West is the standard, and everything else is just copying it. But not when it comes to corruption and exploitation, though. Of course not. That part is uniquely Dubai, uniquely Middle East.

Unfortunate. Because this is a very interesting piece and could have been much more enjoyable otherwise.

The Story of a Suicide | The New Yorker, $

Absolutely tragic. And also very complicated. Lots of things to unpack here—bullying, homosexuality, the cutthroat cattiness of university dorm buildings—and it can be really easy to get lost in the details. I found myself losing sight of the heart of the story, which is that someone died. Whether he was driven to that point almost seems secondary.

3 Teens Almost Got Away With Murder. Then Police Found Their Google Searches | WIRED, $

Really solid crime story here, but nothing special in that context. What really makes this stand out is the tech and justice angles, which I found to be very frightening. There’s definitely a public safety case to be made for law enforcement having access (under the right circumstances) to our search data, but boy does that put us on an increasingly lubricated slippery slope.

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Something Short

Just a little bit of a bonus for this week’s edition.

This one isn’t long at all, not by any stretch of the definition. It might not even technically qualify as longform. It took me all of 10 minutes to finish. But it makes some very interesting—and in my opinion under-appreciated—points about AI and its unfortunate rise in the Media and in writing more broadly.

Much of the case for AI is built on efficiency and optimization. Why waste your time on these small, rote tasks when you can let the computer handle it? (Writing is nowhere near rote, but just for the sake of argument). That’s a short-sighted case, as this piece argues.

We push our writers to publish more and more in order to bring in more and more ad dollars. As a result, we end up forcing them to resort to these dishonest methods of churning out content (I agree with calling it slop instead of content), which in turn feeds our AI models increasingly stupid, low-quality and fictitious training material.

It’s a self-defeating spiral. And Media companies are, in my opinion, making the clearly wrong decision in riding the AI bandwagon instead of strengthening their base and looking for an economic model that’s sustainable and actually works.

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! 👋

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