'The batman of extreme porn'

Hi 👋 

Another Monday, another Lazy Reader reading list ✨

Fair warning up top: I’m writing arranging this newsletter just hours before I need to have it sent out. I’m cutting it really, really close this week. That’s because last week was probably in the top five most hectic weeks I’ve had at work. I was taking care of my sanity by reading these longform stories, but I never found the time to sit and assemble this newsletter.

Which brings me to today.

And which also explains why the blurbs this week might be shorter than usual. Sorry! 🙏

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

• Roads & Kingdoms The Chef Vs. The Octopus

• Outside The Perfect Storm

• Vanity Fair Madoff’s World

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!

Interesting take here on porn and personal freedoms.

Making a case study of one lawyer who has taken it upon himself to defend tiger porn, of all things, is also a really effective way of hooking readers and making the piece’s arguments more entertaining.

That said, the shock factor can only go so far, and once that goes away, I don’t know if the points here are sharp or just some white, upper-crust hand-wringing about individual liberty without paying mind to systemic problems. There is some talk here about “feminist porn,” which is a phrase I don’t think I buy. The people in this story insist that it is liberating for them to film their bodies in ways that they want. Which I get. But then there’s also the question of the porn industry being systemically exploitative against women and brown bodies and poor people. Surely those things are worth confronting, too?

But I’m not a woman, so I don’t think I’m in the best position to opine on this.

How Merck Turned its Wonder Drug Into a Blockbuster — And Priced Out Cancer Patients Worldwide | ICIJ, Free 

I’ve said this a lot in the past but for new readers: I work in biopharma media. I write about this stuff all day everyday. So I know that the numbers ICIJ has here don’t paint a complete picture: I acknowledge that drug development is an insanely risky and expensive enterprise, often taking upwards of 15 years and roughly a billion dollars for one product. BUT STILL. Keytruda (and so many other drugs, for that matter) is a mega blockbuster. It has, over its lifetime, accrued more than more than a hundred billion dollars. And the only people that benefit from it are those who can afford its costly price tag.

Well… them and Merck’s execs and shareholders, who continue to reap obscene amounts of money yearly.

Ciudad de la Muerte | TexasMonthly, $

I’ve grown to love these types of experiential journalism. The first-person deeply reported essay that uses the self as a vehicle to tell a compelling narrative. Writer Cecilia Ballí does that expertly here—and in 2003, when this story was published. The longform genre was still young then, so that makes this even more impressive. She immerses herself in the streets of Juárez, and as a result manages a very raw accounting of that place’s bloody history and frightened present.

A minor gripe: Toward the end, I feel she centers herself in the story a bit too much for my liking. The effect is that it flattens the

Scientists Invented a Fake Disease. AI Told People it was Real | Nature, Free

I’ve been trying to stay open-minded about AI, but I just can’t stomach how it so glibly rips off the work of other people and just completely steamrolls over their (our) hard work and expertise. Not to mention the environmental impacts, too.

And now this story shows that despite all the input it demands, and how much it steals and destroys, it’s still just a stupid algorithm. Don’t ChatGPT your symptoms.

My Week at Sea with Canada’s Alt-Right | The Walrus, Free

Pretty mixed about this one. The author and his wife go “undercover” to embed with a group of right-wingers in Canada. In reality, they just join a fancy cruise arranged by a well-known conservative figure, who also put together a program of sorts. For most of the story, it feels like the writer is walking a tightrope between trying to understand these people or ridiculing them, dismissing them as nuts. Only one of those is productive, I think, for a media organization. The ending is peak centrism and I’m not sure the writer really gets anywhere.

Losing My Friend Over Wegovy | The Cut, $

If this weren’t a legit publication with a rich history, I’d have been convinced that this was ragebait. Because why else would such a selfish essay be published? The writer here seems like the type of person who believes the world should tiptoe around her and coddle her. Which sucks because there are good reasons to be skeptical of (and maybe even hostile to) these new weight-loss drugs. But all the good points she could have made were swallowed by her self-absorbed, self-pitying prose.

This has largely faded from the public’s memory—and given what we’re all going through, I understand—but it bears resurfacing that the U.S. is severely and fatally ruptured along several social cracks, most notably race.

Longform articles typically build up to big conclusions like these, but this one, bravely, starts from it. The entire story, then, is just a massive illustration of this fact. It looks at how social movements can swell around these divides and collapse unto themselves. It shows how reactionary forces regard progress as offense. And, at the heart of this, it shows that one lone vigilante-type racist can do the most foolish and vile things but still be afforded incredible leeway and consideration and presumption of innocence—things that aren’t extended to people trying to fight for their rights.

This is a thorny topic, I admit. The opioid catastrophe in the U.S. has claimed so many lives and even more futures. So I understand the impulse to crack down on opioid use. And maybe I’m speaking with the privilege of being far removed from it, both in terms of time and space, but the punitive control here seems misguided at best, cruel at worst.

This piece focuses on how the healthcare system tightened its rules on opioid dispensing, so I’m going to focus on that. The medical industry isn’t at all spotless here. Countless doctors and hospitals got rich off of the crisis, and the genesis of opioids themselves, driven by Purdue and the Sacklers, was only possible because of a network of high-profile and well-connected experts that were willing to look past the addiction risk in exchange for a few bucks.

And so it seems to me here that the effort to just outright eliminate opioid use, even for patients who need them and are closely monitored, is just an attempt to get rid of the problem as quickly as possible without being accountable for the establishment’s role in the crisis. Being accountable here means, at the very least, maintaining proper opioid schedules for patients who are cleared to receive it, and helping manage addiction in those who aren’t. Not just cutting them off.

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! 👋