The Waves Will Come for You

PLUS: The rabbit monster thingy at the altar of consumerism.

October 13, 2025

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Hi 👋 

Another Monday, another TLR. Ready for another week of longform reading? ✨

The hardest part of putting these newsletters together is thinking of something to write in these intros. Which in turn sets off a particularly nasty episode of agonizing about how boring and uneventful my life is. I spend most of my days tapping away at my keyboard chasing deadline after deadline. Such is the life of a pen-for-hire, I suppose.

On my days off (which don’t come frequently), I often turn to video games, swapping my keyboard for… another keyboard. Or maybe a controller. Definitely nothing riveting enough to fill the wordcount of this intro segment.

So instead I ramble, like now, without a structure or even a planned ending for this.

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

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!

PS - Thanks again to 1440 Media for supporting this week’s newsletter! Please consider clicking their ad link after the fold below. It’s free, really easy, and helps me out a ton!

The Man Who Sailed His House

Two days after the Japanese tsunami, after the waves had left their destruction, as rescue workers searched the ruins, news came of an almost surreal survival: Miles out at sea, a man was found, alone, riding on nothing but the roof of his house. Michael Paterniti tells his astonishing tale.

The prose here is slightly unorthodox and takes getting used to. And I concede that this piece may be a bit harder to read than what we’re used to here at TLR. But I also recognize that it’s this unusual style that will make this story memorable to me for years to come.

The tale at the heart of this piece is harrowing, to say the least. Many times while reading I found myself recoiling or breathing much quicker, with my heart rate rising. (I wasn’t reading this at the gym, too, so I know it’s not because of exercise). The man at thee center of this story made one minor mistake that ended up destroying his life, taking away all that he’s worked for—and the love of his life. It almost ended up taking him, too, if not for a stroke of luck that I’d say is nothing short of a miracle.

Michael Paterniti puts his readers in the position of this man, making this ordeal much more emotional, more palpable.

Another note, more minor this time: It’s interesting to see how a crisis can magnify otherwise small cultural nuances. The man is stuck on his roof in the middle of the ocean, dehydrating to death, but he still manages to muster concern for his filial duties. He still feels concerned over how his wrong choices will burden his parents. Really interesting.

Lifted | The Atavist Magazine, $

Evan Ratliff. Another one of those top-tier writers who I can always rely on to deliver a gripping longform experience.

Here, he dives into a heist that shook Sweden to its core. It was a bold and bombastic operation: Helicopters, explosives, well-coordinated diversions, a high-profile suspect, and, of course, a frustratingly inept police force. And Evan did the complexity of the crime justice. He layered his events and details really well, and kept me guessing for as long as he could. And I like when crime stories sustain that whodunit feel.

Outside stories are fun because they take me outdoors, which is not a place that I typically frequent (I know, I know. I’m trying). That’s the case here, too, of course, but interestingly, the story inspires a certain inward journey as well. At first you just watch it play out with the story’s character, but towards the end, when the writing becomes more heavy-handed about demons and personal battles, it really puts you in a mood to look at your own life and reassess your aspirations and motivations. Or at least that’s the effect it had on me.

In the worst way possible, there’s really not much to say about this story. Conflict (a painfully inadequate word to describe the violence that Israel has been unloading onto Palestine for decades now) has been shown to breed these types of personal and gender-based abuses. And the entire world is complicit in just sitting by and letting this unfold.

Relatively short one here, but don’t let that fool you: This story comes packing. And I may be showing a bit too much of my hand here, but this is a prime example of why I always say that environmental activism that isn’t grounded on climate justice is toothless. I think until the class and race (among others, of course) dimensions of the climate crisis becomes mainstream, then there’s really not much hope for us to keep the planet going.

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A Journey Into the Heart of Labubu

I made an epic trek across four countries to answer one question: Why is the world going mad for a plushie monster?

If you’ve been here a while, you know that The Lazy Reader tends to shy away from recommending relatively recent stories (think published in the last few weeks). I figure that the algorithm is more than capable of feeding you these timely articles.

But every once in a while, I come across a piece that makes me tear down this (admittedly lenient) rule of mine. This one, from WIRED, is one of those pieces.

On the surface, the story doesn’t really seem all that much. The title packs a punch, sure, but why would someone put all that effort—not to mention thousands of words—into this Labubu mess? Worse: Why would a newsroom pay a writer to look into this tacky monster plushie? Surely it’s just a fad that’s fated to fade into irrelevance in a couple of years.

And… none of that is wrong. The story doesn’t really dispel any of that thinking. But it does give it an incredible level of depth that really makes you appreciate the cultural impact of these types of consumerist symbols. Not to excuse the unbridled capitalistic impulse underpinning the Labubu wave, but the thing really is much more than that.

Also incredibly interesting to see the human dimension of it: The men who built their ugly-toy empire from the ground up, the quirky artists behind the iconic imagery, and the throngs of hungry patrons hoping against the seemingly impossible odds of getting their own Labubu.

Really tragic and really heartwarming—two emotions that rarely coexist well in a single piece, much less in a True Crime story. And yet this one pulls off all three very easily. At no point does it feel like the writer is forcing the narrative to happen, nor did I ever get the sense that the writer was trying to pull emotions out of me.

The story itself was a gut-punch, centered on a man who made some mistakes in his life but was trying his best to make things right. As the writer says: How can you not root for someone like that? Not all things are meant for happy endings, though, but as this story shows, we can always choose not to condense lives into our moments of weakness, an instead fix our sights on moments of beauty.

Aside: Seattle Met seems to do heartwarming exceptionally well. The other story from them that made a mark on me is this one, about a teacher and his legacy.

Closing out this week’s newsletter with a gorgeous essay.

Here, the writer looks back on her childhood, where she finds herself between two worlds: England and Iran. In one, she and her sisters are othered, seen as outsiders with a strange, exotic background. In the other, they’re treated much better, almost like they’re royalty. Tehran, in her memory, is magical.

There is a shadow that hangs over most of the essay, and I can only assume that the writer deliberately delays addressing the question of privilege. Because when she does, it hits hard and powerfully, and it forces the reader to come out the other end of this essay feeling unsatisfied, leaving a bad taste in the mouth. I can only assume, too, that this was on purpose, a reflection of how things have soured between England and Iran.

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!

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Until next Monday! 👋

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